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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from " 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/increasematherfoOOmurd 


INCREASE MATHER 


LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD 


OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 


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SOGICEL SEAS 





INCREASE MATHER 
THE FOREMOST AMERICAN PURITAN 


BY 


KENNETH BALLARD MURDOCK, Pu.D. 


Instructor in English at Harvard University 


“Tt is a trite (yet a true) assertion, that historical studies are 
both profitable and pleasant. And of all historical narratives, 
those which give a faithful account of the /ives of eminent 
saints, must needs be the most edifying.” —IncrEASE MATHER. _ 





CAMBRIDGE 


HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
1926 


COPYRIGHT, 1925 


BY HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 


Second Impression 


PRINTED AT THE HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U. S.A. 


AKO, 


MY FATHER AND MOTHER 





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ix 


“ 
ORY 


PREFACE 


‘¢ [Poa fact that Increase Mather has a generally recog- 
nized claim to be considered the greatest American 
of his generation, and the further fact that he was both a 
leader and a representative figure in a most important and 
too imperfectly studied period of the history of this nation, 
have led to the writing of this book. Therefore I have tried 
not only to give a “life” of Mather, based upon all the ma- 
terial now available, much of it unused before, but also to 
retell in some measure the story of his time in New Eng- 
land as it is revealed in the tale of the character and activ- 
ity of its foremost citizen. If this double purpose mars my 
work, considered purely as biography, I hope that it may 
be justified to some extent as history, 1 in so far as it serves 
to shed more light on Puritan days in this country. 

I have no illusions as to the completeness of the picture. 
Mather bibliography I have left to more expert hands 
than mine; I have made no attempt to go deeply into all 
the problems of Congregational history raised by Mather’s 
writings, nor have I tried to record every known fact about 
his life. Errors and gaps there must be, but I hope that in 
spite of them there is no essential point in Mather’s life 
left quite untouched. 

The footnotes are designed to give brief references to 
the sources and authorities whence | have drawn my 
conclusions. I hope that their presence may not prove 
discouraging to those to whom notes always suggest “ped- 
antry”’ or an intention to address scholars alone. It 
seemed unwise to omit them, lest inconvenience be caused 
to anyone specially interested in the subject of the book; 
and I think that it is still entirely possible to read the text 


4 


vill PREFACE 


without being hindered in any way by the fact that the 
notes have been printed for those who may care to refer 
to them. For those who find the annotation inadequate 
or desire further discussion of some controversies or prob- 
lems, I offer a general reference to a thesis, “The Life and 


Works of Increase Mather,” presented by me in 1923 to 
‘the Faculty of Harvard University, and now deposited in 


the Harvard University Library. | 

In quoting unpublished documents I have tried to re- 
produce the originals so far as this is possible in type. In 
the case of Mather’s own writing, however, ordinary sym- 
bols do not always suffice to reproduce what he wrote, for 
his abbreviations are curious, and, at times, he indulges in 
what is virtually shorthand. At times, too, the illegibility 
of his manuscripts makes it necessary to interpret a vague 
scrawl by a word which is not easy to trace in the lines of 
the original. I have dared to do this in no case where the 
sense is affected by my conjectural reading, without put- 
ting my guess in brackets. In using Mather’s “Autobiog- 
raphy” I have ordinarily copied not from the original but 
from a careful transcript owned by the American Anti- 
quarian Society, but I have compared this with the original 
whenever there is involved a proper name or any other 
word the reading of which might seriously affect my con- 
clusions. In using printed records I have referred to and 
followed the printed text. The letter “s,” however 
written or printed, I have always given in its modern 
form. 

It is, perhaps, only fair to say that my purpose has not 
been to eulogize Increase Mather, nor merely to defend 
him against certain unfounded accusations. My creed is 
not one of which he would have approved; my personal 
predilections are not towards Puritan theology or modes 
of life. But, in writing a biography, based upon the facts 
which can be discovered, I have found it impossible to 


PREFACE 1X 


avoid the conclusion that he has often been misjudged. I 
hope that I have said no word in his favor except when the 
evidence has supported my statement. Where what we 
can be sure of makes possible no decision, I have felt that 
it was quite as fair to admit that he may have been right 
as to follow the traditional line of least resistance to the 
conclusion that a Mather was always wrong. I should not 
choose Puritan Boston as an abiding place, but I have yet 
to discover any facts which deprive me of my respect for 
many of those who did. 

To thank all those whose help has made my work more 
easy and delightful than it could otherwise have been, is 
impossible in the limits of this preface. Among the books 
I have used, I owe a special debt to Barrett Wendell’s 
“Cotton Mather,” which sets a standard for sympathetic 
and scholarly understanding of the Puritans, and to Mr. 
J. T. Adams’s “Founding of New England.” With the 
latter I have ventured often to disagree but, written as it 
is with a point of view of to-day, its restatement of the 
history of the early period of New England is both stimu- 
lating and useful. Apart from books I owe much to libra- 
rians, ministers, and scholars, both in England and this 
country, whose courtesy and interest have been unfailing, 
and through whom I have had access to much material 
not otherwise to be secured. I cannot omit specific notes 
as to the very great kindness of the American Antiquarian 
Society and its librarian, Mr. Clarence S. Brigham, and 
the similar generosity of the Massachusetts Historical 
Society. Mr. Julius H. Tuttle, librarian of the latter 
society, has been constantly helpful. Mr. William G. 
Mather of Cleveland, and his librarian, Mr. Thomas J. 
Holmes, have been most liberal in allowing me to utilize 
their collections, and Mr. Mather’s generosity has fur- 
nished the illustrations for this book. Mr. Albert Matthews 
has been an unfailing resource in time of perplexity. Pro- 


x PREFACE 


fessor George L. Kittredge has aided me in many ways, 
and was good enough to read a part of my manuscript. 
Miss Fanny B. Chandler, who acted as my secretary dur- 
ing much of my work, and my long-suffering wife, who 
has patiently given hours to the reading of proof, stand 
high among my benefactors. In England, Sir Charles 
Firth, the authorities of Dr. Williams’s Library and of 
the Royal Society, the Reverend Andrew Leggatt of Dor- 
chester, and Miss Edith F. Carey of Guernsey, gave in- 
valuable assistance. 

To Professor Chester N. Greenough I ventured to dedi- 
cate the thesis in which this book originated, and I cannot 
now present this work without further recognition of my 
obligation to him. He first called my attention to the need 
for such a biography, and his help made possible the com- 
pletion of my task. My highest hope for these pages is 
that they may bring to some few readers a share, at least, 
of the enthusiasm which his wisdom and skill impart to 
those who, like myself, have been fortunate enough to 
study the literature and history of America as his pupils. 


K. B. M. 


CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS 


April 1925 


—— 


. THe Martuers In NEw ENGLAND 


. Harvarp COLLEGE. 


. “ILtLustrious PROvVIDENCES,’ 


. THe New CHARTER 
. “DoLEFULL WITCHCRAFT’. . 
. DEFENDING HIS FAITH 


MLA EEHIRS TS DOE REAT OUR ieee 


. INCREASE MATHER 


CONTENTS 


OWL NeLee ott loa! Aoi s Mal A eek Ree Cee ne ht ete of lh' le ib Rent rs ieale 
ee Tite ae Cope aG ee WM a, ee US 8 ry 
Teer eins ee Te ter ew cy Pacis eee rete itu) Pete ft 
SL) ele ©) mee eet wat y We lants 


BoyvHoop 


THE CHOoIcEe oF A LirE-WorK 


. EXPERIMENTAL YEARS— ENGLAND, IRELAND, AND 


(GUERNSEY 


Ci AS ne SiS) We erp Alo Sn eae veal Ve) ee ua ee PT aieiniy tei) ie, he Pel We ye ee eet TS 
eae A Aes el et eet Pern hte Mr Ble ee ier tan | we 


Phe fC mee se ve) eels eh Sim orl es # leas eo.’ Fore ple. 1 Wield (> On A Fes Ue fa 


. LireERARY LEADER AND SPOKESMAN OF THE PEOPLE 


> 


AND THE FLIGHT TO 
ENGLAND 


Cun s Clee Mey b ire eke Netiiine: 1. ter eh eyewien e éo8! cep 1) pit Veh reer) GO. Vane (ale « EAte 


. THE Court oF JAMES THE SECOND 


. THe NeEGoTIATION witH WiLu1AM III 


eh Vet Brel a"). tap) ) hae eke. 


. THE BosTONIAN IN LONDON . . 


6 eT Ae ap te) eel Ae. 


Otis CT etn Le wie celle rye: 0 are LES 


. O_tp AGE AND THE New CENTURY. . 


et hi ey are ee ee ea 


106 


Ha 


ses 
190 
211 
246 
262 
287 
sh 
337 
375 
389 


xii CONTENTS 


APPENDICES 
A. MaTuer’s AGENCY AND THE PLYMOUTH COLONY. 
B. Tue ReEtTuRN OF THE MINISTERS UPON WITCHCRAFT 
C. List or Books REFERRED TO 


D. CuHeck List or MATHER’S WRITINGS . 


INDEX . 


403 
405 
407 
416 


423 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


PN GRE ASIVLA THEREINGTO8Sy ca arr Lt eet eE Ute pail Frontispiece 
From the painting by Van der Spriett, owned by the Massachusetts Historical 
Society 

RIGHARD:  MATHER’S BIRTHPLACE AT WINWICK oe. os. Io 
Reproduced by permission from a photograph, taken about 1895, and now 
owned by the Harvard University Library 

GREAT TORRINGTON CHURCH, DEVONSHIRE 
From an engraving representing the church substantially as it was in Mather’s 
time 

Asi bie CORNHT GUERNSE Yipee et eee ena yen au toric 66 
From a lithograph of a painting believed to have been made in 1672 


CHURCH OF ST. MARY DE LODE, GLOUCESTER, ENGLAND .. 68 


Reproduced by permission from a photograph by Sidney A. Pitcher, Gloucester, 
England 


OTL NEA VY Ci meme Vere MUL ae D, Sab eR NAN Ect) Sei) <i ae a EN 70 
Reproduced by permission of the National Portrait Gallery, from the original 
painting by Kneller 

TITLE-PAGE OF JOHN DAVENPORT’S “ANOTHER ESSAY,” WHICH 

CONTAINED INCREASE MATHER’S FIRST PRINTED WORK 82 
Reproduced by permission from a copy of the book given to Fohn Cotton, the 
younger, by Increase Mather, and now owned by the New York Public Library 


INCREASE MATHER’S HANDWRITING — TWO PAGES OF ONE OF 
tells) (DD PAW SG HY on weeny dy Aang Seanad eg tic Sas ER mR Tan aa ats a et Ceunetie H go 
Reproduced by permission from the original diary, owned by the Massachusetts 
Historical Society 
PetcE LD RENAE Ree hk CW Atay ast ror os am Mbt unl eactah eye U ae 96 
Reproduced by permission of the Society for the Preservation of New England 
Antiquities, from their photograph of the contemporary wood-cut by Fohn Foster 
TD ERINRCOVY EAN Sr rst MO) Sth eet SE tires ly fy St col Vo. Calc oc AL igi ete bse wc 100 
Reproduced by permission of the National Portrait Gallery, from the original 
painting by F. Riley 


Xill 


XIV LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


SIRMEDMUND ANDROS lv 4 Sak ko 
From a photograph of an engraving, supplied by C. E. Andros, Esq., Liver- 
pool, England 


LONDON FROM SOUTHWARK IN THE REIGN OF WILLIAM 
ANDSMAR YY) ) 08 OSI OSU RS aa RE et ce See ds 


Reproduced from an inset in an old colored map published before 1700 by 
Facob de La Feuille of Amsterdam. This is one of the earliest views showing the 
city in process of rebuilding after the fire: the northern end of the bridge still in 
ruins, the monument commemorating the fire, and the dome of the new St. Paul's 


WHITEHALL PALACE FROM. THE ‘RIVER. 7) .00 2 ne eee 
Reproduced from an old print 


INCREASE MATHER’S SECOND VINDICATION OF NEW ENG- 
LAND? “FIRST! PAGE eigen oii be ley eka ena a 


Reproduced by permission of William Gwinn Mather, from the original in his 
collection 


INCREASE MATHER’S SECOND VINDICATION OF NEW ENG- 
LAND) SECOND GPAGE aia. Ft se hed im arte betes ly ae 
Reproduced by permission of William Gwinn Mather, from the original in his 


collection 


SIR JOHN SOMERS 9.07 os iene inks. Sal eile Gh Ola a en rr 
Reproduced by permission of the National Portrait Gallery, from the original 
painting by Kneller 

ROBER TY BOYLE i ale eine CET aia teh an cn 
Reproduced by permission of the National Portrait Gallery, from a painting 
after F. Kerseboom 

RICHARD‘: BAXTER? i dicen) Woura) an best Uncle yO aie 
Reproduced by permission of the National Portrait Gallery, from a painting by 
an unknown artist 

THOMAS HOLS fi) sieodestitae oid die Belted era cians nn ann cr 
Reproduced by permission from an engraving by Pelham, owned by the Harvard 
University Library 

WILLIAM STOUGHTON 


Reproduced by permission of the Boston Athenaeum, from a portrait in their 
possession 


Ce OR ee ek Pe ee eS eK MU SO Pe Se ee 


ELISHA COOKE: (4 Mose Pe. Coe oleae 


Keproduced by permission from a drawing owned by the American Antiquarian 
Society 


192 


202 


222 


223 


230 


264 


266 


276 


296 


316 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS XV 


mE aD aVEaL LOY BOS LON sag ene ry orp yard ohn ete e 358 


Reproduced from a facsimile in S. A. Green’s Ten Fac-simile Reproductions 
relating to Old Boston 


TGR MASEAMALHER? INV OLD tAGE (oi! wie sia ain toe SOG Nel 384 


_ Reproduced by permission from a portrait owned by the American Antiquarian 
Soctety 


INCREASE MATHER’S HOUSE AS IT WAS IN THE NINETEENTH 
REA CI NL ADE Yen ig ad nes CHig CMP INTE Viaanals Mw SOMA OA, (fe UU 390 
Reproduced by arrangement with the Halliday Historic Photograph Co. 


Except as otherwise noted, the originals from which the illustrations are repro- 
duced are in the possession of the author. 








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CHAPTER I 


INTRODUCTION 
fas centuries ago there died in Boston a man who had been 


for fifty years a true leader of his time. “The most pow- 
erful man in all that part of the world,” * Increase Mather’s ' 
achievement was the highest development reached by a family 
whose name 1s writ large in the annals of four generations of New 
England. Richard, renowned among the founders of the early 
Massachusetts church; Cotton, the apotheosis of intense Puritan 
character; and Samuel, a steadfast patriot of Revolutionary Bos- 
ton, strong figures as they were, all lacked the rugged symmetry 
of growth and concord with their times, which make the abiding 
interest in Increase Mather’s career. 

To the student of New England history — religious, political, 
or literary — the great Mathers reveal themselves in lights vary- 
ing in vividness according to the interests of the observer. The 
wanderer in the field of early American literature comes on 
Cotton Mather at every turn. Salem witchcraft is a favorite 
historical hunting-ground, and here again Cotton 1s to the fore. 
And, of course, he who would learn of educational or religious 
aspects of colonial days, can hardly spare the name of one of the 
Mathers. The general reader, however, preferring beaten paths 
to narrow byways of research, is apt to confront no one but 
Cotton face to face, and, for such a one, he alone of all his family 
survives as a personality apart from the historical impress of his 
deeds. It was his fortune to have in his nature an epitome of the 
most fervid traits of New England Puritanism; and the fact that 
his light shone most clearly in the days when the ideals he cham- 
pioned were beginning to wane, lends the force of contrast to the 
impression he makes. And, finally, he has found a sympathetic 
and discerning biographer whose art filled his subject with the 
breath of life.? 

Yet, great as Cotton was, his father was greater. Increase 
Mather’s life has a breadth of activity that makes it widely 


1. Moses Coit Tyler, 4 History, 11, 68. 
, 2. See Barrett Wendell, Cotton Mather — an admirable biography. 


4 INCREASE MATHER 


appealing. The long continuous developing of his character and 
accomplishment offers to the biographer a satisfying theme. 
Imbued from birth with Puritan ideals, he fought to maintain 
them while they were alive, with power and support in his world. 
It has been said that he “went in and out among men and dealt 
with open-air questions,” and in so doing he “became the most 
prominent New Englander of his time” and “held the chief 
influence in the colony.” * He “may be pronounced one of the 
strongest and most interesting men produced in the American 
colonies.” 4 “‘To the last, he was a sovereign man throughout 
New England, illustrious for great talents and great services, 
both at home and abroad.” 5 “There is no man who compares 
with him in the New England of his day in ability, leadership, or 
influence, or who more sincerely labored for what he deemed the 
abiding interests of the Kingdom of God.” ® In secular affairs 
“he moved, the commanding figure, through the political agita- 
tions of the time”’;7 and, from the point of view of literary history 
“his writings certainly have considerable merit. His style is far 
better than that of his son — simpler, more terse, more sinewy 
and direct, less bedraggled in the dust of pedantry; it has remark- 
able energy.” ® 

It is in such phrases that Increase Mather is described for us. 
Brief summaries of his prowess in this line or that, comment on 
his connection with one political event or another, and an occa- 
sional short biographical sketch — these are his memory’s only 
shrine. They leave many sides of his life unrecorded. His charac- 
ter, the influences that went into its making, his learning, his use 
of it in writing, his interest in science, and the process by which 
his personality was shaped and impressed itself on his world, are 
fit material for biography. From these elements the present work 
-attempts to give to the reader of to-day a picture not wholly 
incomplete of one who was “for many years the most influential 
_as well as the most learned man in New England,” ® and is still 
by nature and achievement worthy of close acquaintance and a 
share of living fame. If the task be half-way well done, Increase 
. Katharine Lee Bates, American Literature, pp. 41, 44. 
reyV cubs LPENt. PLE SOrY a Daag oe 
. Tyler, 4 History, ii, 69. 
. W. Walker, Services of the Mathers, p. 70. 
. Bates, American Literature, p. 41. 
. Tyler, 4 History, ii, 70. 
. J. F. Jameson, History of Historical Writing, p. 47. 


OO On An Ff 


INTRODUCTION 5 


Mather, renowned in his own day for his accomplishment, reveals 
himself to us as by intrinsic qualities of personality a man for all 
time. 

First of all, of course, such a work aims toward collecting and 
arranging the many bits of concrete fact on Increase Mather’s 
life. State papers, college records, contemporary accounts, his 
diaries, his autobiography, and his son’s biography of him, form 
a treasure trove. Some of these documents were avowedly written 
for posterity, and elimination of the harsher traits of their subject 
is to be expected in them; but, used with due caution, they have 
unquestioned historical value; and, of course, some of the con- 
temporary authorities on Mather, as well as his private papers, 
contain evidence which is proof against the most rigid criticism. 
Later biographical sketches too often display opinion or conjec- 
ture warped by a point of view out of harmony with Mather’s 
time and its standards.*° It is far safer to rely on trustworthy 
documents dating from his own period, written by his friends or 
foes, or penned by himself with no thought of their surviving for 
the use of readers in the twentieth century. True insight into his 
character can come only from such sources, and the narrative of 
his life can be more safely drawn from them than from any ac- 
count colored by later theory or prejudice. 

But, however sure we may be of our facts, in the use of them 
there must be constant selection and frequently we shall find 
interpretation necessary. The dates and texts of thousands of 
Increase Mather’s sermons are preserved, but to cite them adds 
nothing to a useful analysis of him. Such selection of material 
is obviously dictated, but far more difficult is the problem of 
understanding such matter as one decides to use. Starting with 
the same historical landmarks, in the fields of witchcraft or the 
Andros revolt, various authors have followed diverging paths. 
Perhaps there is no infallible protection against this; but if the 
standpoint of reader and writer be firmly established and main- 
tained, the insidious distortion that grows from standards differ- 
ing with the opinion of one man or one age may be avoided. The 
point of view safest for us is, if we may attain it, that of the 
seventeenth century. We shall need an attitude of sympathy 


10. Most of these deserve no special mention, since the material they contain is acces- 
sible in the other authorities cited. Most useful are J. L. Sibley, “Increase Mather,” 
in Biographical Sketches, i, 410-470; W. Walker, ‘‘Increase Mather,” in Ten New Eng- 
land Leaders; and B. Wendell, Cotton Mather, which has much to say of Increase 
Mather. 


6 INCREASE MATHER 


toward the Puritan spirit, and a resolve to judge Increase Mather, 
not by preconceptions foreign to him in nature and time, but by 
the ideals he understood and lived for. 

Manifestly, to clamber up to such an observation ground is 
hard. For a writer not a Calvinist to lead equally unsympathetic 
readers back through three centuries to a time when God was 
vengeful and discipline was a cardinal point in life, to guide them 
from a diffusely free-thinking world to one where religion was as 
vigorous as it was narrow, is no small task. If the way 1s stony, 
the surest aid is a memory of the historical conditions in England 
and America, of contemporary literature in the Old and New 
World, and of the state of learning at the time. To encourage 
such mindfulness the story is told throughout with frequent 
allusions, if nothing more, to the intellectual and political prog- 
ress of the period. If the goal be reached and we can read of 
the verifiable facts of Increase Mather’s life with a background 
drawn not from our era but from his, we shall come near meet- 
ing him face to face. We are to gauge his stature by what others 
did who lived with him and before him; we are to measure his 
writings by what others produced from the resources that were 
his; and we are to appraise his character in relation to current 
influences of training and environment. If he excelled his fel- 
lows, it matters little whether he met modern tests. If he wrote 
better prose than his contemporaries and won their praise, it is 
a fact of meaning for literary history, even though to our eyes, 
myopic through difference in standards, his books seem dull. 
Such contact with the seventeenth century need not and will not 
blind us to the changes of later years; and though we see as nearly 
as may be eye to eye with him, we may still applaud when his 
ideas seem by the experience of later years to have been proved 
of enduring value. 

The final problem is again one of selection. Somehow we must 
apportion our attention to the diverse branches of his many 
activities, with reference at once to the charm they held for him 
and to the indication of character they offer us. Remembering 
that “the spiritual force animating a new religious movement 
attracts the intellectual energies of the period, and furnishes them 
a new reality of purpose,” ™ and that the spirit of his day decreed 
that his life-work should be primarily for the church, no preoccu- 
pation with ecclesiastical concerns should blind us to elements in 


11. H. O. Taylor, The Medieval Mind, ii, 427. 


INTRODUCTION 7) 


him which persist when Puritanism dies. For literary history, 
his style, his use of sources, and the structure of his books, are 
matters of weight. Though he seems to have written with an eye 
fixed on the statement of things dear to his time rather than on 
the manner of expression, the means by which he gained his end 
are of importance in relation to what came later. Thus some 
study of his books becomes for us a main thread in the web. 
Similarly, his service to Harvard, his relation to the state, and his 
interest in science, culminating in his plea for the radical and 
much-feared experiment of inoculation, to him all minor parts of 
a universally consuming devotion to God, are all lines of his 
thought worth following because they are often connected with 
the broader history of his period and ours. 

Drawing from facts so far as we can make sure of them, select- 
ing and interpreting by the standards of his era, we may outline, 
perhaps, the fundamentals of his life. Here and there a gap may 
be bridged by conjecture, admitted frankly as such, provided this 
guessing be based on probabilities inherent in his nature and his 
time, and with the reservation that no such additions may alter 
the firmer lines fixed by safer means. The background comes 
from history, from details of the material side of his world, and 
from some reconstruction in our minds of the influences he knew. 
Against these ground colors, the portrait finally takes shape when 
light and shade are introduced in the softening or intensifying of 
some one deed or thought in accord with its power to reveal to 
us qualities essential to his nature, and as fundamental now as 
then. A living picture can be made on such a plan. The brush is 
faultily guided if the result lack life. Yet to think of a biography » 
as a portrait gives too static an impression. Say rather that, | 
rightly seen, Increase Mather’s life is as a tree growing great 
against a background familiar but changing year by year. At — 
times there is blending with the woods behind, at times a rugged ~ 
contrast in a light from a new angle, but always there is the 
sweep and greatness of a living thing transforming manifold — 
forces into indomitable growth. 

Mists of controversy occasionally make the vision waver. Such 
veiling we find when we try to see Mather clearly against the 
background of the “witchcraft delusion.”” Denunciation of all con- 
cerned, eager efforts to disentangle the relation of Cotton Mather 
and his father to the blaze of excitement over the devil and his 
works in Salem, and the ease with which certain writers have 


8 INCREASE MATHER 


found it possible to believe that the two men played identical 
parts,” have complicated written history. But in such cases our 
point of view may save us. Forget the nineteenth century’s de- 
crying of the folly of a darker past, and remember the seven- 
} teenth-century scholar’s view of Satan and his power among 
“men. Remember that much we believe sincerely to-day, two 
centuries from now will be an antiquarian’s delight. It is not 
given us to know how time will judge, any more than it was 
Increase Mather’s fortune to guess that more than one funda- 
mental commonplace of life would seem to his descendants mere 
delusion. To judge by criteria he could not know is to condemn 
unheard; to assess the meaning of his acts by the tests available 
to him is to go far toward understanding what he did, and why. 

More baffling is the question that confronts us on every page — 
what was Puritanism? Increase Mather was a Puritan; yet which 
of us can define the name? The facts are too far out of our reach. 
We are dealing not with events, dates, or simple motives, but 
with a state of mind, complex, radically opposed to most of our 
ideas, and yet, for those who owned it, a primary force. There 
have been as many attempts to state the true inwardness of 
Puritanism as there have been sincere and earnest students of 
early American history; and only in those rare cases where the 
written word is the product of close study of Puritan writings, 
Puritan deeds, and the thought of the years that came before 
them, do we find a foundation of rock. Original sources — the 
documents of the Puritans themselves — are too numerous, too 
broad in scope, and, some modern writers would have us believe, 
too insincere, to serve our ends. 

There are, fortunately, a few axioms by which we may chart 
a course through shoals of controversy. They are agreed to by 
most students and are founded on search among Puritan words, 
books, and acts. Briefly, then, we may say that Puritanism was 
the school of thought dominating the lives of certain dissenters 
from the rites of the Church of England, some of whom, early in 
the seventeenth century, founded the colony of Massachusetts 
Bay. Puritans, as we use the name, refers to these men. The 
vigor of their belief is shown in two aspects — their religious 
faith and organization and their conduct of civil affairs. In creed 
they were Calvinists, believing essentially in a doctrine which 
assured eternal life to certain fortunate ones predestined to sal- 


12. Cf., for example, J. T. Adams, The Founding, pp. 451-456, especially p. 455. 


INTRODUCTION 9 


vation. The rest of mankind were immutably condemned to ever- 
lasting torment. The elect remained the elect, and the damned 
remained the damned. This rigid classification could not be 
changed. The animating principle in the scheme was each man’s 
desire to know whether he was to be saved. He who could con- 
sistently lead his life always in harmony with God’s will could 


consider himself elect. Thus the Puritan strove valiantly to ’ 
exercise his will in accord with God’s, and while striving, analyzed | 


a 


Tray 


and reviewed his every thought and deed, weighing and trying | 


them in the never-ending effort to be sure that his spirit was so. 


attuned to the Divine wish that he might hope to escape the fires 
of eternal punishment." The God presiding over this system was 
rigorous and stern, exerting His power directly upon every affair 
of human life and avenging human misdeeds by prompt inter- 
ventions of His might. The Devil, too, was a personality with a 
direct influence in earthly matters, and a vigorous and ever- 
present enemy of God-fearing men. Good Puritans were sure 
that Satan had power to do them harm and was to be met with 
in the daily walks of life. His messengers were active. Only 
prayer and devotion to God could protect against his wiles. 
With such beliefs, the formal side of religion was expressed in a 
church the services of which were patterned on what were be- 
lieved to be Biblical models. The result was the early Congrega- 
tionalism of New England. To follow God’s will was the aim of 
every Puritan, and God’s will was written down once for all in 


the Bible. Hence, not only in the church but also in secular | 
matters, religion was the centre of life, and the Bible was an. 
infallible guide for government and a complete body of law for 


every human activity. The clergy were the interpreters of the 
divine writings, and inevitably, therefore, interpreters of the fun- 
damental law of the Puritans’ world. In the Scriptures they 
found rules for every man and every sphere. No act of life, how- 
ever trivial, was beyond the reach of such laws. 

Yet, with this belief and this discipline, men were no less 
human. To them their faith, grim and repellent as we find it, 
‘was warm and glowing to such a degree as to give their lives all 
the intellectual stimulus, all the inspiration, and all the absorb- 
ing interest they could crave. Their intense concentration on 
individual spiritual progress, and the advance of the state toward 


13. Cf. B. Wendell, ‘Some Neglected Characteristics of the New England Puritans,” 
in his Stelligeri. 


10 INCREASE MATHER 


what they believed to be godliness, eclipsed all else. Naturally, 
in such a world there was no place for ideas of religious liberty or 
freedom of conscience, and few Puritans thought of them. God’s 
law was revealed in the Bible, interpreted by His agents, the 
clergy, and departure from it meant departure from the Divine 
Word. Where anyone who wavered by ever so little from har- 
monious following of God’s will could feel sure of everlasting 
death, differences of religious opinion showed not merely “free- 
dom of conscience” but hopeless unregeneracy. To punish a man 
who failed to accept Puritan rule in all its aspects, to banish him, 
or to take his life, was but to protect the church and state decreed 
of God by just human chastisement of one already sentenced by 
divine preordination. Inevitably Puritanism was intolerant; 
inevitably it was often cruel. Tolerance and gentleness would 
have meant faintness in the pursuit of its central ideals. 

Our bundling together of loose strands plucked from the 
skein of Puritanism leaves much unsaid.“ The love for learning, 
the zeal for education, the neglect of art in favor of more practical 
pursuits, are all traits untouched. Such omissions are repaired 
in the pages which follow, for in every year of Increase Mather’s 
life there is material of use to him who would know the Puritan. 
And, after all, though our view of the mental attitude of early 


‘New England be incomplete, it matters little for our ends. Our_ 


goal is a visioning of Increase Mather’s life and nature. The 
medium in which he worked was Puritanism. Whatever we think 
of it, the life of the man absorbed by it has meaning and validity. 
One thing alone we must grant, the sincerity underlying his point 
of view. Whatever Puritanism was, it was real to him. However 
we may decry it as unenlightened or cruel, or praise it as funda- 
mentally concerned with the noblest of aims, we cannot forget 
that in it, with its faults and virtues, there was power to occupy 
the energies of an intellectually active and vigorously human 
man. The qualities that made him “‘the greatest of the native 
Puritans”’’ are eternal. Their outward expression was dictated 
by his times. Their appeal for us lies in their essential strength, 
and their harmonious fusion into a character of potentiality for 
any age and, in his own period, developed in leadership and power. 

14. See, for further statements, J. F. Jameson, History of Historical Writing, p. 343 
G. E. Ellis, Memorial History of Boston, i, 161; J. C. Bowman, ‘The Hated Puri- 
tan,” in Weekly Review (N. Y.), v, 10; and, especially, S. P. Sherman, “What is a 


Puritan?” in The Genius of America, pp. 35ff. 
15. Wendell, Cotton Mather, p. 287. 


MOIMNIM LV AOWIdHLUIG SAAHLVNW GUVHOIa 








CHAPTER II 


THE MATHERS IN ENGLAND 


Se time in 1614 there sat beneath a hedge in Lancashire 
a boy of eighteen, weeping bitterly “to lament his misery 
before God.” * Such was Richard Mather’s religious coming of 


sprang his consecration to the Puritan church. With his boyish 
fears at his first spiritual awakening, began an unswerving devo- 
tion to his faith, passed on as a heritage to his descendants, and 
transformed by him and them into service which brought renown 
to their family name. 

For generations before Richard’s day Mathers seem to have 
been known in England, especially in Lancashire,? and there are 
still members of the family proud of their heritage. But it was 


effect of Puritanism on traditional ideas. Certain it is that in 


of Lowton, a part of the parish of Winwick in Lancashire, 
became the birthplace of a man who was to gain more than local] 
Prominence and, in Puritan circles, enduring fame.3 


1. Increase Mather, The Life and Death of... Mr. Richard Mather (reprinted, Boston, 
1850), p. 48. 

2. For the name Mather, see H. Narrison, Surnames of the United Kingdom, vol, 2, 
and C. W. Bardsley, 4 Dictionary of... Surnames. 

3. Dictionary of National Biography, and W. Beamont, Winwick: Its History and 
Antiquities (2d ed.). 


< 


ae INCREASE MATHER 


Richard Mather’s parents “Thomas and Margarite Mather 
were of Ancient Families in Lowton aforesaid, but by reason of 
some unhappy Mortgages they were reduced unto a low condition 
as to the World.” 4 We know little more, except that the father 
of Thomas, and the grandfather of Richard, is said to have been 
one John Mather.’ The family seems, so far as one can tell, to 
have been of the yeoman class. 

To his parents Richard Mather owed the privilege of an edu- 
cation as good as the time and place allowed. A harsh school- 
master, William Horrocke, then in charge of Winwick school, 
“very severe and partial in his discipline,” caused his pupil to 
“desire that his Father would take him from School, and dispose 
of him to some other Calling.” © But Richard could write later: 
“God intended better for me, then I would have chosen for my 
self; and therefore my Father, though in other things indulgent 
enough, yet in this would never condescend to my request, but 
by putting me in hope that by his speaking to the Master, things 
would be amended, would still overrule me to go on in my 
Studies.” The father’s determination to educate his son, proof 
against the boy’s own pleas, was not immune to the arguments 
offered by his slender purse. “Popish merchants” came from 
Wales to Warrington, and there, two miles from Winwick, heard 
of young Richard as “a pregnant youth.” Needing an appren- 
tice, they applied to his father for him, It was the stern school- 
master who restrained Thomas Mather, sorely tempted “to 
accept of this Motion, because now his Estate was so decayed, 
that he almost despaired of bringing up this his Son as he 
had intended.” Horrocke was “importunate with” Richard’s 
“Rather still to keep him at School, professing that it was great 
pity that a Wit so prone to Learning should be taken from it 
" ” or that he should be undone by Popish Education.” vedas 
Perswasions of the Master... prevailed,” and Richard continued 
to study, boarding at the school in winter, and in summer travel- 
ling each day the four miles through the quiet countryside 
between the old house in Lowton and the town of Winwick.? 

Horrocke was not the only influence to defend Richard Mather 
against Popery. One “Mr. Palin, then Preacher at Leagh,” 


4. I. Mather, The Life and Death, p. 43. 
s. H. E. Mather, Lineage of Rev. Richard Mather, p. 25. 


6. I. Mather, The Life and Death, p. 44. For Horrocke, see DNB, article 


“Richard Mather,” and Beamont, Winwick, pp. 91, 92- 
7. I. Mather, The Life and Death, pp. 44 45. 


THE MATHERS IN ENGLAND 13 


impressed the boy with “such a plain, powerfull and piercing 
efficacy .. . as was not to be seen in the common sort of Preachers 
in those dayes, by means whereof some Illumination... was 
wrought in him.” § 

but fifteen years old. Projects for American colonization and 
troubles in Ireland probably had affected him hitherto quite as 
little as James I’s difficulties with Parliament. To him the 
translation of the Bible in the great King James version may 
well have seemed of less immediate interest than the fact that 
in the same year he was to leave Lowton for what must have 
appeared a considerable adventure — the twenty-mile journey to 
Toxteth Park, and the beginning of his duties as schoolmaster 
there. 

In 1611, the tenants of Sir Richard Molyneux, owner of a piece 
of property known as Toxteth Park, formerly a holding of the 
crown, and to-day swallowed up in Liverpool, resolved to set up 
for their children a grammar school.’ It was to Horrocke that 
they applied for a teacher,*° and so Richard Mather, who would 
have preferred to go on as a student in one of the universities, 
but was, because of the necessities of his family, left no choice, 
became at fifteen a full-fledged schoolmaster. “The Lord helped 
him in those his young years to carry it with such Wisdome and 
Love and Gravity amongst his Scholars as was to admiration, 
so as that he was by them both loved and feared, beyond what 
is usual, even where there are aged Masters.” ™ 

His success gave him local reputation, at least, and he had a 
chance to continue his own studies in the course of his work. 
Religiously, too, the experience was of influence, for at Toxteth 
he lived with the family of Mr. Edward Aspinwall, “a Learned 
and Religious Gentleman” and undoubtedly a Puritan in sym- 
pathies. Add to this that Richard Mather heard sermons from 
Mr. Harrison, “then a famous Minister at Hyton,” and one sees 
why this boy, faced with problems beyond his years, was bowled 
over by a conviction of his own sinfulness and of the saving 
powers of the Puritan’s faith.” 


8. I. Mather, The Life and Death, p. 46. Leagh was the village now called Leigh. 
g. V. D. Davis, The Ancient Chapel of Toxteth Park, p. 1. 

10. Lbid., p. 9. 

11. I. Mather, The Life and Death, p. 47. 

P2107. PDs 47) 49> 


14 INCREASE MATHER 


After the first stormy access of religious feeling, “Being thus 
become a New Creature, he was the more eminently a Blessing in 
the Family, and in the Calling which the Lord has disposed of 
him in: And such notice was taken of him, as that even from 
places remote Children were sent unto him for Instruction and 
Education; and many were, by the Lords blessing upon his En- 
deavours, fitted for, and sent unto the University. Some years 
having been past over... he resolved ... to spend some time 
in one of the Universities. . . . Accordingly he went to Oxford, 
and continued for some time there in Brazen-Nose Colledge.” He 
delighted in the books and learned men he found there, “But his 
heart being afore this touched with the fear of God, the great 
Superstition and Prophaness which he was forced there to be- 
hold, was no small grief unto him.” *3 

Once again his education was interrupted, for before he took 
his degree, the people at Toxteth called him back, “desiring 
that he would... instruct not so much their Children as them- 
selves, and that not in meer Humane Literature, but in the things 
of God.” * In name they were members of the Church of Eng- 
land; they were Puritans at heart. Naturally enough they did 
not care to go three miles to St. Nicholas’ Church in Liverpool * 
to be ministered to with rites they did not approve. Mather’s 


preaching was more to their mind. “After due Consideration, for 


weighty Reasons he accepted” their call, and on November 30, 
1618, he preached his first sermon.” 
| James I’s policy toward Puritans was strict enough to make 
episcopal ordination necessary for this minister of twenty-two. 
He accepted it at the hands of Thomas Morton, Bishop of 
Chester. The story is told how, after the ceremony, the Bishop 
startled him by singling him out with the words: “I have some- 
thing to say to you betwixt you and me alone.” He then asked 
Mather to pray for him. “For I know,” said Morton, “the 
Prayers of men that fear God will avail much, and you, I believe 
are such an one.’’?7 If the story be true, and it comes to us from 
Richard himself, through his son Increase, such notice from the 
Bishop, who was known as “a great patron of good and learned 

13. I. Mather, The Life and Death, pp. 48, 49. 

14. Idid., p. 49. It appears that Mather was not the first minister at the Toxteth 
Chapel. Cf. Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, \xxi, go. 

15. V. D. Davis, The Ancient Chapel of Toxteth Park, p. 2. 


16. I. Mather, The Life and Death, pp. 49, 0. 
TSA Uti hei hO, 





THE MATHERS IN ENGLAND 15 


men,’ *® must have been flattering to this newest preacher in 
his diocese, and, if it became known abroad, must have aug- 
mented Mather’s reputation. The incident seems typical of 
Morton, who belonged, according to Baxter, “to that class of 
episcopal divines who differ in nothing considerable from the 
rest of the reformed churches except in church government,” and 
was placed by Clarendon with “the less formal and more popular 
prelates.” *° 

Richard Mather, thus settled in his daily work at Toxteth 
Park, found time enough free from his parish cares to sue for the 
hand of Katharine Hoult, or Holt, daughter to Edmund Holt of 
Bury. She “had (and that deservedly) the repute of a very godly 
and prudent Maid.” ?° Her father had no love for Puritans, but 
his wife and many of her family were years later called by Increase 
Mather “singularly pious and prudent.” 7* Such comment from 
an ardent Puritan suggests, at least, that to Mrs. Holt Richard 
Mather’s religious opinions were not so repugnant as they were 
to her husband. Whatever his scruples against a nonconformist 
son-in-law may have been, they were overcome by September 29, 
1624, for on that day his daughter’s marriage to Richard Mather 
took place.” 

The couple moved three miles, to ““Much-Woolton,”’ where 
Mather bought a house of his own. He preached each Sunday at 
Toxteth, but his influence was extended, for in alternate weeks he 
lectured at Prescot, and was often called to preach in other 
parishes. In 1629, too, at the request of the Lord Mayor, he 
gave two monthly sermons at Liverpool, winning thus a wider 
influence than had yet been his.”4 

In 1625 James I died, and Charles succeeded him. The new 
King brought an ecclesiastical policy far less tolerant of the sort 
of nonconformity Mather was coming more and more to uphold. 
Six years before, Bishop Morton had been replaced by John 
Bridgeman. The latter was no more unsympathetic toward the 
Puritans than his predecessor, but he had to contend-with official 
interest in the affairs of his diocese. In 1633, Laud became Arch- 

18. DNB, article “Thomas Morton, 1564-1659.” 

19. L[bid. 

20. I. Mather, The Life and Death, p. 51. 

21. Autobiography. 

22. I. Mather, The Life and Death, p. 51. 


OCI ETT BRN oe Bod 
24. J. A. Picton, Selections from... Archives, p. 200. 


16 INCREASE MATHER 


bishop of Canterbury, and in August of that year, Bridgeman, 
probably under pressure from his superiors, suspended Richard 
Mather for failure to use the ceremonies of the established church. 
“Some Gentlemen in Lancashire” interceded, among them one 
Simon Byby, “a near Alliance” of Bridgeman’s, proved on an- 
other occasion a good friend to John Cotton.’** By their efforts 
Mather was in November restored to the ministry. Undaunted, 
“he more fully searched into . . . and handled the Points of 
Church-Discipline”’ in his preaching.” 

By this time he seems to have been committed fully to the 
“Congregational Way,” a form of worship the importance and 
nature of which will become clearer in connection with the 
establishment of the Mathers in the colonies. His activities 
promptly got him into further trouble, for visitors from Richard 
Neal (or Neile), Archbishop of York, the man who had first 
brought Laud to the notice of the King, and one who declared 
himself “a great adversary of the Puritan faction,’ came into 
Lancashire.27. In 1634 Mather was summoned before them at 
Wigan. In his own words, he stood ‘“‘before them without being 
daunted in the least measure, but answered... such words... 
as the Lord put into” his “mouth, not being afraid of their faces 
at all.’ He was sentenced to suspension for nonconformity, and 
‘n this latest crisis his friends seemed powerless. Later in his life 
he told how he had torn up the certificate of ordination he had 
received from Morton, thus protesting against the ceremonial 
it represented. We may well believe that this took place before 
1634, when his views seem to have been definitely fixed in regard 
to all the rites of the established church. Before the court at 
Wigan, we read, he declared that he had never in his ministry 
worn a surplice; and his son reports with evident satisfaction 
that one of the court remarked, “It had been better for him that 
he had gotten Seven Bastards.” *° 

From this time his thoughts seem to have turned to New 
England. Characteristically, he drew up detailed arguments as 
to why he should hazard the long voyage to the New World. He 
seems to have convinced himself. To remove from a corrupt 

2s. I. Mather, The Life and Death, p. 54. For Byby and Cotton, see T. Hutchin- 
son, 4 Collection of Original Papers, 1, 275. 

26. I. Mather, The Life and Death, p. 54. 


27. DNB, article “Richard Neile.” 
28. I. Mather, The Life and Death, p. 56. 


THE MATHERS IN ENGLAND 17 


church to a purer; to remove from a place where the truth and 
the professors of it were persecuted, to a place of more quietness 
and safety; to remove from a church where the discipline of 
Christ was wanting, to a church where it might be enjoyed; to 
remove from a place where the ministers of God were unjustly 
inhibited from the execution of their functions, to a place where 
they might more freely execute them; to remove from a place 
where there were fearful signs of desolation to a place where one 
might have well-grounded hope of preservation, and of God’s 
protection 7? — these were some of the objects to be achieved by 
his pilgrimage. In this list we find no word of universal religious 
toleration to be set up in New England. To Mather and similarly 
minded men, as to his sons who followed after, New England was 
to be the home of one religion which, however radical and sub- 
versive of tradition it may have seemed in Wigan, in Boston was 
to be as firmly established and as explicit in its demands as the 
religious order against which it was a great revolt. 

Talk with Lancashire friends, and letters from Hooker and 
Cotton,?? whose desertion of England had won them prominence 
in Massachusetts, strengthened Mather in his plan. In April, 
1635, in his thirty-ninth year, with his wife and his four sons, 
Samuel, Timothy, Nathaniel, and Joseph, the eldest a boy of 
nine, he set out from Warrington for Bristol. Picturesqueness 
is added to the scene, if we believe that to avoid detention he was 
forced to travel in disguise.** Seven days were used in the journey 
of one hundred and twenty miles to Bristol. How they were 
inspected and licensed to leave the country, how they sailed on 
June 4, in the Fames, of their delays in getting to sea, their sick- 
ness, the wonders they saw, and of their escape from shipwreck 
and coming to anchor at last at “Nantascot”’ on August 16, we 
may read in Richard Mather’s graphically detailed “Journal.” 
On August 17, 1635, the family went ashore at Boston, and from 
that day dates the fame of the line of Mather in New England. 

It took independence of character to be a Puritan in the early 
seventeenth century, and Mather’s life in England shows that 
he by no means lacked the courage of his convictions. It took 

ag. I. Mather, The Life and Death, pp. 57ff. 

. 30. Thomas Hooker and John Cotton, two divines prominent in early New England. 
Ibid., p. 68. 
QT ul eid.5p.\09, 


32. Reprinted in Dorchester Antiquarian and Historical Society Collections, Number 3, 
Boston, 1850, pp. 2ff. 


18 INCREASE MATHER 


intellectual vigor and sound learning to achieve as much as he 
had achieved in the first forty years of his life. Willingness to 
undergo hardships for what seemed a good and true cause was 
needed for him to undertake the long voyage to Boston. His 
qualities may well have been shared by his wife, and a large part 
of the burden must have been hers to bear. Doubtless she did 
‘t well. The character of his parents accounts for much in their 
most famous son Increase, and those to whom in later years he 
was to give his name. 


CHAPTER III 


PURITAN EMIGRANTS 
N Richard Mather’s “Journal” for August 16, 1635, we read 


“came yt night to ancre... before Boston, and-so rested y* 
night with glad & thankefull hearts y* God had put an end to ot 
long journey.” From the deck of the little ship they looked out 
on “a most pleasant harbor,” such as they had never seen before, 
“amongst a great many of Ilands on everyside.”” Timber-covered 
hills, salt marshes, and natural meadow lands, with here and there 
a pale column of smoke marking some one of the villages about 
the bay, made a pleasant picture to travellers weary of the sea. 
But in the hearts of Richard and Katharine Mather there must 
have been emotions other than mere thankfulness for their 
journey’s end. 

At our safe distance it is hard to remember what real terrors 
were known in the early seventeenth century to lurk behind the 
smiling landscape of Massachusetts. It is only too easy to forget 
the chill of strangeness that struck to the heart of a Lancashire 
man viewing for the first time the awakening of English life on 
the shores of New England. ‘Instead of villages of seasoned timber 
and stone, comfortably gray with age, here were scattered log 
huts or barn-like houses, with newly made clapboards covering 
beams recently cut from the surrounding forests. Instead of 
fields matured by centuries of tillage, and enclosed by hedges or 
trim walls, Mather saw in what was to be the home of his last 
years woods broken only by rough clearings or by the broad 
natural meadows stretching down to the sea, Above them rose 
the bare hills of Boston, one crowned by the newly built beacon." 

The very lack of underbrush held meaning, perhaps, for the 
Mathers may well have known that the Indians had burned over 
the ground to give clear passage for their hunting parties.2, With 
such thoughts came the memory that the red-skinned “Children 
of the Devil” 3 held great terror for those who sought to do God’s 

1, W. Wood, New Englands Prospect, p. 40; J. G. Palfrey, History, 1, 395. 


2. W. Wood, New Englands Prospect, p. 16. 
3. Cf. Cotton Mather, Magnalia, book I, chap. 1, section 2. 


20 INCREASE MATHER 


work jin a wilderness community. Perhaps they might be con- 
verted to a Christian mode of life, but the bears and wolves were 
sure to prove even less tractable neighbors. Somewhere, too, 
there may have lurked a momentary dread of “the kingly Lyon” 
as an enemy still more to be feared.‘ 

Richard Mather had gone too far to turn back. The courage 
that led him to cross “one of y® greatest seas in y* world,” § and 
the spirit that supported him before the court at Wigan, were 
ready to brave dangers on these unfriendly shores. Just in so far 
as we can realize what this courage and this spirit were, and 
translate ourselves into the position of those of our ancestors who 
were imbued by them, can we hope to understand the world in 
which the two Mathers laid the foundations for the enormously 
significant career of their son Increase. If we fail to catch their 
fervor, then Richard, Increase, Cotton — all the Mathers, and 
their fellow founders of New England — become mere historical 
abstractions of a grim and repellent type. If we cannot share 
their warm devotion to their ideal, the picture of Puritan New 
England becomes cold and lifeless, and the great figures fade into 
the dimmest of gray. We are handicapped by three centuries of 
change, and by the numbing influence of historical distance. 
Facts that were to Richard Mather the very elements of daily 
life are for us but sentences in a textbook, remote and colorless on 
the printed page. To him the affairs of the Boston in which he 
landed were as vividly clear as the political situation in England 
which led to his intrepid setting out across the sea. To him the 
meaning of the government of Church and State in New England 
was as apparent as is to us the latest venture in “‘self-determina- 
tion.” The causes and theories from which the new structure 
arose were quite as well established in his mind as are in ours 
the essential changes wrought by the European war. In facing 
his new world he had chiefly to overcome the perplexities caused 
by new surroundings, new climate, and the material beginnings 
of a new colony. When we try to stand beside him, however, 
our difficulty is less in appreciating the externals of frontier life 
than in picturing plainly enough the form of state and the type 
of church which made early Massachusetts what it was. Above 
all, it is hard for us to do what is most of all necessary — to share 

4. W. Wood, New Englands Prospect, pp. 20, 21; T. Lechford, Plain Dealing, 


pp- 111, 112. 
5. R. Mather, Yournal, p. 31. 


PURITAN EMIGRANTS 21 


in some degree the enthusiasm that made this government, this 
church, and this great colonial venture, not a dream of some 
philosopher in his closet, or the material for history of distant 
antiquity, but an intensely living fact. 

We can hope to feel the power of this enthusiasm only through 
recalling the circumstances from which it had its birth. On the 
one hand, the teachings of Calvin, the growth of popular educa- 
tion in England, and the restless search of many men for the 
purest and most primitive way of service to God, come at once 
to mind. On the other side, we cannot forget the tendency of the 
English Church after the Reformation to grow quite as rigid as 
the establishment against which it had rebelled, nor the inevitable 
realization by English kings that a strong ecclesiastical force, 
obedient to the royal will, was essential to the effective exercise 
of royal power. Against this background stand those brave men 
and women who despaired of the Church of England, and, for 
preferring to its rites a different form of worship, which they 
believed to have been ordained by Holy Writ, incurred the 
penalties of the English law, fled to Holland, and suffered there 
the homesickness of loyal Englishmen on foreign soil. They 
dreamed of a colony of their own, under the English flag, but with 
their own forms of worship, so much purer, they warmly believed, 
than any England knew; and in their amazingly courageous 
migration to Plymouth they made their dream a fact. Their 
complete separation from the established church shows how far 
Puritanism had developed in 1620. Their facing down of perils 
which, they knew too well, beset them, reveals, as we read of it in 


Bradford, a first great blazing up of that placing of service to ~ 


God before service to man, that eager search for the true way of 
life, and that hot vigor in turning the religious ideal into the 
practical basis of daily life, that made New England possible. 
Beside these pioneers there stand those other Puritans whose 
protest against the English Church was less fundamental but 
quite as sincere. Their difference was not in creed or doctrine 
but purely in matters of government and ceremonial. Increase 
Mather says, “we agree with other reformed churches,” and adds 
that it was “what concerns worship and discipline, that caused 
our fathers to come into this wilderness.” ° They insisted that 
the local congregation must be an integral unit, independent of 
others, and that its basis must be a covenant of its members 


6. Religious History of New England, p. 7. 


o2 INCREASE MATHER 


agreeing together to form a church. Over such bodies of believers 
there were to minister men deriving their powers from the con- 
gregation, with jurisdiction only in spiritual matters.” And, of 
course, the guide in every concern of life was the word of God 
which must be admitted to be directly revealed in the pages of 
the Bible. We must not think, because no one of these tenets 
had to do with the creed or the fundamental doctrine of the 
church, that the points at issue were any the less grave. God was 


‘to be strictly obeyed, and His written commands followed in 
detail. The ceremonies of the Church of England were not 


directly ordered by Holy Writ. Hence they were not to be toler- 


od 


ated by him who feared God.? To protest against them was but 
to observe the divine will. Nothing could be more important 
to the true Puritan. We need not try to see just what he thought, 
so long as we realize that he did think, and thought so deeply 


‘that his conclusions were to him something to be upheld not only 


with words but with deeds. For them he would face the utmost 
in hardship, and defy perseveringly the perils of sea and land. 

Men who felt thus were the settlers in and about Boston. In 
their ranks were a number of university men, many of them 
educated at Puritanically inclined Cambridge. Richard Mather’s 
reasons for leaving England to follow them five years after their 
great migration were the same that theirs had been. It was to 
the State they had built that he came, and under their govern- © 
ment he established himself. As we have seen, neither he nor 
they wished universal tolerance. Their aim was to build their 
own church in their own way. It was still considered part of the 
English establishment.%? Its members were English subjects, 
their numbers were few, their difficulties great, and the country 
strange to them. All this Richard Mather understood, just as he 
was prepared to find in the Massachusetts of 1635 a community 
where the government and the religious system were both based 
on such directions as could be found in the Bible, where the 
ministers were often learned and always regarded as the final 
authorities on Scriptural interpretation, and where, accordingly, 
they held great power in the state. Originally it was held that 

+. Cf., in general, Religious History of New England, pp. 1-733 H. M. Dexter, Con- 
gregationalism; and W. Walker, 4 History of the Congregational Churches. 

8. Cf. Chapter 4, note 6, post. 

givClabkalireyipai ayia 


10. Idem, i, 312; C. Mather, Magnalia, book I, chap. 4, section 1; and T. G. Wright, 
Literary Culture, pp. 15, 16. 


PURITAN EMIGRANTS 23 


the religious and the civil governments were quite distinct; but 
inevitably, with Holy Writ as the guide for both, and the minis- 
ters as the sole interpreters of its pages, the line of division was 
often blurred. Mather knew, and we must not forget, that it was 
with a definite idea of founding not only a church but a har- 
monious Bible government that the Puritans came.™ Their 
success or failure can be read in his life, and his son’s. Both 
influenced profoundly the course of Puritanism in the New World. 

Religion and government were the greatest concerns of the 
Puritan, and foremost in Richard Mather’s mind. They were 
topics that left little room for minor things. In England such” 
men as Jonson, Massinger, Ford, and John Milton dominated 
the literary scene. But in Plymouth and Boston, literature was 
a minor matter, and such books as were written live for the most 
part not as art but as earnest records of human experience, or 
concise statements of definite religious views. To the New Eng- 


landers of the time, art was less important than the record of / 


solid realities, and books were valued only for the sound doctrine | 
they might contain. Poetry and drama were luxuries out of 
place in a frontier community where practical learning and in- 
struction in religious and civil business were staple needs. More- 
over the Puritans were for the most part men tasting for the first 
time the fruits of education. Most of them came from families 
without learned background, and to them the opportunity to 
study had come as a rare privilege offered by the changing times. 
Naturally, then, they turned to the classics, to the solid corner- 
stones of scholarship, and to those books most packed with 
learning. They found no time for mere works of art. They wrote 
to teach, and read to learn. Scholarship, not literature, was their 
goal. 

All this, and much more, Mather accepted without thought, as 
part of the very texture of his everyday world. Many another 
aspect of his times, forgotten by us, deserves to be recalled, but 
even with what has been said we may perhaps understand him 
and his illustrious son so far as we deal with the mere events and 
facts of their lives. But we cannot hope to appreciate how the 
Mathers felt on that memorable evening when they first walked 
through the newly laid out streets of Boston, unless we try 
constantly to revive in ourselves the spirit that gave them 
courage and life. 


11. Religious History of New England, pp. 12, 13. 


24 INCREASE MATHER 


It was a spirit of sincere loyalty to an ideal, and to a church 
and state founded upon it. Their minds knew no doubt where 
their great purpose was involved; and doubts of a later day 
should not affect us when we would follow them with sympathetic 
minds. Unquestionable sincerity was theirs, great hardihood, 
great perseverance, and, judged by their results in the wilderness, 
great skill. Calvinists we cannot be, perhaps, nor can we see 
in every incident the direct interposition of God. Few of us can 
create for ourselves an Almighty so stern and rigorous as Richard 
- Mather’s, or accept the doctrine that only a chosen few are God’s 
elect, and by Him saved from hell. Each of us, aided by the 
accumulated experience of three hundred years, can pick flaws 
in the government and policy of the Puritans. But is there one 
of us who can quite resist men who served their faith with such 
deep earnestness? They were radicals when it was far easier 
to be reactionaries; they were pioneers when the wilderness held 
unusual dangers; they were state-builders in spite of every 
material difficulty; they were church-builders unaided by the 
force of tradition; and they were, above all, sincere and single- 
minded in word and act. Grant them admiration for what they 
achieved, share their spirit for one moment, and the task of for- 
getting the twentieth century for the seventeenth is done, and 
with clear consciences and stout hearts we may land in Boston 
with Richard Mather. With him, we shall be ready to meet and 


face unafraid what the morrow may bring forth. 


Gea aN 


THE SETTLEMENT OF THE MATHERS IN NEW ENG- 
LAND. — THE BIRTH OF INCREASE MATHER 


S we leave the Fames with Richard Mather, and enter the 
Boston of 1635, there are still details that waken our 
interest, although they were to him the veriest commonplaces. 
We may puzzle over the validity of the charter * by which Massa- 
chusetts was owned, and under which John Haynes was then 
governor. We may question the justifiability of the colony’s 
determination to protect their patent against revocation or 
alteration from England.?, We may stop to consider the way in 
which New England’s political problem, the government of a 
large settlement by those few men to whom the charter gave 
power, and the admission of enough new members to the cor- 
poration to ensure its permanency without endangering its 
orthodoxy, had been solved: We shall find no ideals of universal 
suffrage, abstract democracy, nor any motives other than the 
practical ambition to preserve Massachusetts as a Bible com- 
monwealth, the stronghold of a particular faith. We shall dis- 
cover that the authority was in the hands of Winthrop and other 
good Puritans, elected by church members alone.3 
How this “‘aristocratic republic”’ appealed to the large part 4 
of the population whose interests in New England were not pri- 
marily religious, or who, for one reason or another,’ had not joined 
one of the churches springing up in and about Boston, may seem 
to twentieth-century eyes a grave question. To some of us the 
Puritan political scheme may seem fundamentally wrong. The 
harshness of our Judgment increases in proportion to our belief 
in democracy as we know it as the ideal rule for all states. But) 
Mather saw Massachusetts as a refuge for one sect, where others - 
than the orthodox had no right to disobey the laws piously made | 
1. Lectures on Massachusetts History, chap. 11. 
2. Palfrey, vol. 1, chap. Io. 
3. Mass. Rec., May 18,1631. For Winthrop, see R. C. Winthrop, Life and Letters of 
Fohn Winthrop. 


4. Channing, i, 347ff. 
5. Lectures on Massachusetts History, p. 61 n. 


26 INCREASE MATHER 


for them.® He could regard calmly what was probably the most 
discussed affair of the day in Boston, the banishment of the too 
vociferously conscientious Roger Williams.7 To the Puritans 
this seemed, not persecution, but a necessary weeding out of 
heresy striking at the very root of the structure of the New 
England they believed in; and the checking of an unorthodoxy 
made dangerous chiefly because of the vehemence of its expres- 
sion. Mather could see current affairs as the colonial leaders 
saw them. He could trace in their actions the unswerving pursuit 
of a clearly visioned goal. To it we are too often blind. Thus we 
make the whole record of the early years of Massachusetts seem 
an unintelligible chaos of oligarchic intolerance. Once more we 
must see with Puritan eyes. Only thus can we understand the 
times and the men who dominated them. 

Seeing for the moment as Richard Mather saw, we shall find 
the people in the streets of Boston in no way strange. Their 
doublets and buckled belts, their hose, the ruffs of the gentry, and 
the broad-brimmed hats — and perhaps here and there a bit of 
forbidden lace — were simply English costume, worn by English- 
men in new surroundings. There were social distinctions here 
as at home. “Mr.” and “Mrs.” were titles to be claimed only 
by those of undoubted prominence, by ministers or magistrates, 
while the lesser members of the colony contented themselves 
with the humbler “Goodman” or “Goodwife.”’? 

But, obvious and normal as all this seemed, the Mathers cannot 
have been indifferent to the physical setting of the Puritans’ 
colonial experiment. They found themselves in a city of less than 
five thousand souls,’? with “thirty houses” and many less 
pretentious dwellings, pleasantly situated on a peninsula between 
the “Bay of Roxberry” and the “Charles-River.” There was 
interest for newcomers in the fishing boats at the wharves, the 
fences against the wolves, the heaps of furs from Indian traders, 
the granaries of maize, the fabrics woven at Rowley, the freshly 

6. Lectures on Massachusetts History, pp. 31ff. On the Bible as the basis of the Puri- 

tans’ law, cf. R. C. Winthrop, Life and Letters, ii, 445; W. Walker, Creeds and Platforms, 
p. 203; and J. Winthrop, History of New England, 1, 240. 
_ 7. W. Walker, 4 History, pp. 136, 137; O.S. Straus, Roger Williams; and Channing, 
at Winthrop, History of New England, especially i, 209, 210. Cf. in general, 
Palfrey, i, 300, 388. 

g. On the foregoing details, see Memorial History of Boston, i, 123, 486, 487. 


10. F. B. Dexter, Estimates of Population. 
11. J. Josselyn, 4m Account of Two Voyages, p. 20, and Palfrey, ii, 62 n. 


THE MATHERS IN NEW ENGLAND 27 


felled timber from the woods, and the beginnings of roads through- 
out the countryside.” These were all sights satisfying to a family 
venturing its all in a spot of wilderness recently reclaimed by’ the 
chosen of God. To admit that Mather and his brethren were 
deeply concerned with such practical affairs as the prosperity of 
the fisheries or the Indian trading expeditions is not to be forced 
to follow some modern writers in the difficult leap to the belief 
that worldly considerations eclipsed religious ones in the minds 
of the founders of Massachusetts. Practical necessities of life 
were inevitably to the fore in their thoughts. They were faced 
with the problem of self-support in a strange country; they knew 
that only by active trade could colonists be induced to join them; ° 
and they knew that though they as leaders had come from 
motives largely concerned with their religious faith, their state 
could not survive long with leaders alone. Laborers, tradesmen, 
and craftsmen were all needed for the colony’s life. No one knew 
better than Mather and his spiritually minded brethren that a 
starving town could never nourish a vigorous church. 

To the visitor in Boston in 1635, the prospects for Massa- 
chusetts must have seemed bright, and to the Puritan there was 
good augury for the permanence of his ideal state. Comfortable 
houses were rapidly replacing the huts of the early settlers, the 
wharves bore witness to the beginnings of commerce, while in- 
doors the abundant variety of food showed that, for the present, 
famine was not to be feared.% To us, perhaps, the absence of 
luxury, of amusements, of the visible tokens of an interest in 
art, strikes a chill. To the Mathers and their friends such deficien- 
cies passed unnoticed, or, if seen, were welcomed, for was there 

not always the church? Was not the church to them, in the 
fervency of their faith, the centre of all life? The cold and cheer- 
less meeting-house offered them the warmest and most glowing 
interest man could have. Worship was not worship merely, but 
the gratification of the longing that dictated their every step, the 
apotheosis of all hobbies, and the all-sufficing substitute for 
worldly recreations and unprofitable ways of passing time, given 
by God to be devoted by men to His work. With worship went 
the need and desire for learning, for in knowledge lay greater 
opportunity for service to the Church. Thus, between the 


12. For these details see W. Wood, New Englands Prospect, p. 39, and Palfrey, ii, 52- 


54, 58. 
13. Palfrey, ii, 56, 57, 59, and E. Johnson, 4 History of New England, p. 210. 


14. Cf., for example, I. Mather, The Life and Death, pp. 75, 88, 89. 


28 INCREASE MATHER 


rudely finished study of his home, still redolent of new wood, and 
the severely austere meeting-house, many a Bostonian found 
more than enough of intellectual excitement to fill the hours that 
his labors in conquering the material hardships of frontier life 
left him for such joys. 

Others, no doubt, found their solace in other ways. They 
sought profit in sound coin of the realm rather than in accumu- 
lated credit for a future life. They may well have felt a bitter 
sense of injustice at paying taxes to support a church with which 
they were unsympathetic, and complained, justly enough, we may 
think, against subjection to a government in which they had a 
voice but no vote.’® But their leaders loved the church and 
believed in it, and, to them, men who did not share their belief . 
were outcasts in this world-and the next, without right to dictate 
in a commonwealth governed by the Puritan interpretation of the 
Bible and consecrated to one form of service to God. Naturally 
then, Mather and his fellow thinkers went their way quite 
untroubled by ideals of a rule better than Winthrop’s, and merci- 
fully ignorant of the political theories that in centuries to come 
were to change the world for their descendants. Boston Puritans 
in 1635 believed that they were building on a sound basis. Prob- 
lems might occur, but such men as Richard Mather, by nature 
and experience, were strong enough to face them down. 

The newcomers on the Yames were warmly received. A Puritan 
preacher known in England, in New England was sure to be 
hailed with delight. A man with university training and a student 
and lover of books found many of similar experiences and tastes 
in Boston. An able writer on points of religious controversy, such 
as Richard Mather was soon to prove himself, was to the colonial 
leaders a most grateful prize. It was among friends that he set 
to work to build up a new home, admired Governor Winthrop’s 
house, talked to such reverend men as Wilson and Hooker,?? and 
enrolled himself and his wife as members of the Boston church." 
There were about him many university graduates, and there are 

15. Channing, i, 343; J. T. Adams, The Founding, pp. 172, 213ff., 388; and Lectures 
on Massachusetts History, p. 63. That taxation for the support of the church did not 
seem to some Puritan leaders to be the best method is shown by Cotton’s views, 
reflected in J. Winthrop, History of New England, i, 144, 145 and n. 

16, E. Johnson, 4 History of New England, pp. 104, 105. 

17. For John Wilson, see C. Mather, Magnalia, book III, chap. 3. For Hooker, see 
G. L. Walker, Thomas Hooker. 

18. J. Winthrop, History of New England, i,218n.;1. Mather, The Life and Death, 
P+ 74. 


THE MATHERS IN NEW ENGLAND 29 


abundant records revealing the existence of good libraries, the 
importation of books, and their circulation among the townsfolk.*9 
For a man who loved his own well-filled bookshelves 7° Boston was 
no intellectual desert. For a good Puritan it was a plain well 
watered by sound literature and the teachings of enlightened 
men. 

The books soon to be produced in New England were, indeed, 
more to Mather’s mind than what we now regard as the best work 
of the time in the mother country. A printing press of their own 
relieved Massachusetts writers from the necessity of trusting 
their manuscripts to a long sea voyage." There were printers in 
the colony before they found a place in several quite as well- 
settled communities in England,” and the defects of the books 
they published are far more apparent to us than they were to 
those who read the sheets fresh from the press. To contemporary 
readers the first publications in Massachusetts appealed through 
their timeliness. No flavor of antiquity marked them then, but 
their value was obvious to every New Englander who would read 
the newest expressions on the most important matters of every- 
day life. The beginnings were slow and small, but the first 
literature of the colonies suffers little when compared with what 
practical, hard-working Puritans printed elsewhere.* There was 
no Milton in New England, and such poetry as saw the light, 
though no worse than much which found a hearing at the same 
time in England, lacks any merit to preserve it for our day. 
There was no Ford, no Ben Jonson, no Heywood, and no Shirley 
in Boston, for which every faithful devotee of the new state gave 
thanks; but there was Thomas Hooker to expound religion, 
William Wood to describe the material side of life, and Richard 
Mather himself — all three far better suited to Boston’s early 
needs than dramatists whose art seemed to the colonists irre- 
trievably profane and vile. 

Books and reading were alluring, but Richard Mather’s mission 
was practical. He had come to resume the preaching interrupted 
in England; and we read that, while he “abode with his Family 
for some Moneths in Boston .... Motions from sundry Towns were 

1g. Cf. T. G. Wright, Literary Culture, chaps. 2, 3, 4. 

20. See references to books owned by Richard Mather, in J. H. Tuttle, The Libraries 
of the Mathers, and Mather’s will, [did., p. 277. 

a1. Cf. R. F. Roden, The Cambridge Press. 


22. Cf. T. G. Wright, Literary Culture, pp. 80, 81. 
Sgt. lid... pad. 


30 INCREASE MATHER 


soon presented to him,” desiring him to undertake “the work of 
the Ministry amongst them.” Plymouth called, as did Roxbury 
and Dorchester,?4 and, no doubt, he made the trip to the two 
last-named villages, as an aid to his decision. Roxbury, “a faire 
and handsome Countrey-towne; the inhabitants of it being all 
very rich,” was ‘“‘well woodded and watered; having a cleare and 
fresh Brooke running through the Towne,” in which “there 
is great store of Smelts.”’ 5 

All this was attractive, but it was on Dorchester, a mile away, 
that his choice fell. He “referred himself to the Advice of some 
judicious Friends; amongst whom, Mr. Cotton and Mr. Hooker 
were chief... and their Advice was, That he should accept of the 
Motion from Dorchester.” *® A wise decision, for his chosen field 
was “‘the greatest Towne in New England; well woodded and 
watered; very good arable grounds, and Hay-ground, faire Corne- 
fields, and pleasant Gardens, with Kitchin gardens.” 27 There 
was opportunity here, since most of the first church in the town 
had moved to Connecticut, and Mather lost no time.?® By April 
I, 1636, a group was prepared to take the covenant required to 
form a new church. Prudent and far-sighted Puritan councils 
had seen that, with church membership as the test for the fran- 
chise, the forming of new churches must be supervised, and made 
subject to the consent of the magistrates and the existing con- 
gregations.?? Winthrop tells how Mather and his followers were, 
on their first application, thought to be“not meet at present to be 
the foundation of a church” — but in explaining the defects in 
their belief, he excepts Mather himself as one whose orthodoxy 
was beyond cavil.3° By August 23, however, the defects were 
remedied and “a Church was Constituted in Dorchester according 
to the Order of the Gospel, by Confession and Profession of 
Faith; and Mr. Mather was chosen Teacher of that Church.” # 

To remember just what was the scene enacted in Dorchester 
on that summer day of 1636 is to see more clearly essential ele- 
ments of the time. Preaching, prayer, — both at length, — the 

24, I. Mather, The Life and Death, p. 74. 

25. W. Wood, New Englands Prospect, p. 39. 

26. I. Mather, The Life and Death, p. 74. 

27. W. Wood, New Englands Prospect, p. 39. 

28. I. Mather, The Life and Death, p. 74;S. J. Barrows and W. B. Trask, Records 
of the First Church at Dorchester, Introduction. 

29. I. Mather, The Life and Death, p. 75; Mass. Rec., i, 168. 

30. J. Winthrop, History of New England, i, 219. 

31. I. Mather, The Life and Death, p. 75. 


THE MATHERS IN NEW ENGLAND 31 


presence of representatives from the churches of neighboring 
towns and of a delegate of the civil government, a public confes- 
sion of faith by the congregation, and their offering of evidence 
to support their sincerity, their cross-examination by the minis- 
ters, the bestowal upon them of the right hand of fellowship from 
other parishes, and, finally, the public acknowledgment of the 
covenant, binding the congregation together as a church “to 
walke togeather as a right ordered Congregacon of Cht.”—these 
are the broad outlines.3? In them we see the dawning realization 
of the need for close relations between individual churches and 
between the religious and civil establishments, the ernphasis on 
definite evidence of conversion and public profession of fidelity, 
and, most of all, the democratic basis of the church in its crea- 
tion from a voluntary consociation of would-be servants of the 
faith. 

At least thirty-five men were members of Mather’s church 
when he took up his duties as “teacher,” and laid on his capable 
shoulders the task of “attending to doctrine and therein adminis- 
tering awordof knowledge.’ 4 His parish was large, for Dorchester 
then comprised territory now divided among half a dozen towns. 
There was plenty of work to be done, and the little meeting-house, 
standing near what was later the corner of Cottage and Pleasant 
streets,°° absorbed much of Richard Mather’s time. There was 
also his family to be cared for, and educated, and he had his own 
studies to pursue. Moreover, he soon found writing to be done to 
aid the Congregational cause. There were few idle hours in his 
day, even though his good wife “had taken... all Secular Cares, 
so that he wholly devoted himself to his Study.” 37 

There were no established schools as yet, and the teaching of 
four sons was a task not to be evaded by a Puritan to whom books \ 
had proved the key of life.3® The eldest boy was Samuel, nine 
years old. Two years younger was Timothy, and Nathaniel was 
but five when he first saw Boston. On May 13, 1637, Eleazar was 

32. E. Johnson (4 History of New England, pp. 214-216) describes the founding of 
a New England church. The text of the Dorchester church covenant is in Barrows and 
Trask, Records, pp. 1, 2. 

33. The churches, once formed, do not seem to have been democratic in government. 
Cf. H. M. Dexter, Congregationalism, pp. 424-429. 

34. Barrows and Trask, Records, p. xvii; W. Walker, Creeds and Platforms, p. 211. 

35. Memorial History of Boston, i, 430. 


36. Idid., pp. 435, 436. 
37. I. Mather, The Life and- Death, p. 77. 
38. Palfrey, ii, 46; S. G. Drake, The Pedigree of the Family of Mather. 


a2 INCREASE MATHER 


born.3? Surely the Mathers found abundant interest and many 
problems within their own four walls. Some of their cares were 
shared by the new college across the river in Newtowne,” for 
Samuel Mather graduated with the second class it sent out, in 
1643. Timothy never went to college, but Nathaniel followed 
Samuel, graduating in 1647, and returning at once to England. 

There were preoccupations other than those concerned with 
growing youth. With that habit of introspection so typical of 
Puritanism, and rife among the Mathers, Richard grew uneasy 
as to his own religious state, and gladly availed himself of the 
help of the Reverend John Norton in putting his fears to rest. 
There was literary work, too, for two sets of questions on church 
government came from English Puritans to their brethren in 
Boston. The larger of these Mather set himself to answer, and in 
so doing he covered clearly and ably the fundamentals of Con- 
gregationalism in New England.* A few years later he answered 
another English questioner, in his ““Apologie of the Chvrches in 
New-England.” “® A third work of a different sort must have 
been even more exacting in its demands on his time. “The Whole 
Booke of Psalmes Faithfully Translated into English Metre,” 
familiarly known as ‘The Bay Psalm Book,” appeared as the 
work of John Eliot, famous for his work with the Indians, Thomas 
Welde,* his co-laborer in Roxbury, and Richard Mather. Chiefly 
remembered to-day as the third production of the new press at 
Cambridge, and by its rarity made dear to the bibliophile, it was 
to contemporary readers a scholarly work of sound religious value. 
Its popularity leaves no doubt as to its reception by those for 
whom it was designed. And, though we may find its form 
barbarous, we cannot well forget what obstacles its authors 
overcame. To do so much, in their inexperience and their remote- 
ness from centres of learning, was real achievement. Nor may 
we forget the authors’ own defence of their method and statement 
of their aim. “If therefore the verses are not alwayes so smooth 
and elegant as some may desire or expect; let them consider that 

39. J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, i, 78ff., 157ff., 405ff.; S. G. Drake, The Pedi- 
gree of the Family of Mather. 

40. J. Winthrop, History of New England, 1, 318 and n. 

41. I. Mather, The Life and Death, p. 76. 

42. W. Walker, The Services of the Mathers, pp. 63ff.; H. M. Dexter, Congregation- 
alism, p. 426. 

43. W. Walker, The Services of the Mathers, p. 65. 


44. For Eliot and Welde, see DNB. 
45. Cf.R.F. Roden, The Cambridge Press, chap. 2; M. C. Tyler, History, i, 274-277. 


THE MATHERS IN NEW ENGLAND 33 


_Gods Altar needs not our pollishings:...wee have respected 
rather a plaine translation, then to smooth our verses with the 
sweetnes of any paraphrase, and soe have attended Conscience 
rather then Elegance, fidelity rather then poetry, in translating 


the hebrew words into english language, and Davids poetry into 


English meetre; that soe we may sing in Sion the Lords songs of © 


prayse according to his owne will.” * 


Beyond Mather’s study door the world was moving fast. By | 


1639 the population of Massachusetts had grown to more than 
eight thousand,47 Anne Hutchinson had provoked a storm of 
discussion, and her judges had sown the seeds of recriminations 
to be heaped on them by their descendants;4* the churches had 
held their first Synod;‘° attempts against the Charter had been 
resisted,°° and Harvard had been founded.** There was news from 
England, too. Prynne, Bastwick and Burton suffered at the hands 
of Laud, Ship-money became a topic for popular debate, and the 
fires soon to destroy Charles I’s power burned more brightly. 
And through it all the Dorchester Church heard from their 


Teacher, now fast becoming a leader in Massachusetts, a “way of 


Preaching” which “was plain, aiming to shoot his Arrows not ,,” 


over his peoples heads, but into their Hearts and Consciences.” 
“The Lord gave him an excellent faculty in making abstruse 
things plain.” Constantly he gave himself to study and prayer, 
fought off temptation, and by patience, judgment, and the fear of 
God, won a measure of fame.*? 

He has served us well as a guide. His life has given us a clue 
to the experience of a typical Puritan emigrant, and an inkling of 
_ the problems such men faced. With his eyes we have seen Boston 
in its infancy. In his characteristics, we have found the germ of 
those qualities which were to develop fully in his son. For Richard 


Mather and his wife the birth of a boy, on June 21, 1639, was but — 


another proof of God’s love.*3 For us it is the dawning of the life 
we are to trace in its varied meaning for the men and the times 


46. Preface. 

47. F. B. Dexter, Estimates of Population. 

48. Cf. J. T. Adams, The Founding of New England, pp. 171, 172; B. Adams, The 
Emancipation of Massachusetts, also denounces the Puritans’ course toward Mrs. 
Hutchinson. 

49. W. Walker, History, pp. 142ff. 

so. Palfrey, 1, 556, ea: 

51. Mass. Rec. ela aee 

pow | Mather, The Life and Death, PP sso toa 4- 

Ba: Parentator, P23. 


i 


34 INCREASE MATHER 


which saw its course. On June 23, Increase Mather was baptized 
at the Dorchester church:s*” His name, we read, was given ““be- 
cause of the never-to-be-forgotten Increase, of every sort, where- 
with GOD favoured the Country, about the time of his Nativ- 
ity.” 5° If this be so, it is peculiarly fitting, for never throughout 
his life were the fortunes of Increase Mather unaffected by the 
progress of Massachusetts, and his influence was always felt in 
the state. In him flowered the vigor which brought his father 
from the mediocrity of his early environment to leadership in the 
colony. Richard’s fervor lived again in Increase, and even such 
minor things as the Dorchester Teacher’s habits of work, his 
diary writing, his summaries of his faults, his erateful epitomizing 
of his causes for thanksgiving, and his promises to the Lord, 
were to be aids in his son’s climb to eminence. Thirst for study, 
talent for preaching, and the ability to write for his fellow men 
with what to them were inspiration and power, fell by inheritance 
to Increase Mather’s lot. How he welded his birthright, his 
training, and his experience into a character singularly qualified 
to do an unprecedented work among his fellows, is the keynote 
of the interest held for us by the chronicle of his long and active 


life. 


54. Barrows and Trask, Records, p. 151. 
55. Parentator, p. 5. 


TAY Ey ER? 


BOYHOOD 


HILDHOOD was uninteresting to biographers of Puritan 
tastes. That they told of Increase Mather’s career, with 
hardly a word on the days before he left college, is characteristic 
of his time. ‘Deeds done for the church were of excelling interest 
to our earliest American biographers, and a child too young to 
be a preacher, and still innocent of any valid religious experience, 
offered little to the diligent chroniclers who gloated over the 


spiritual conquests of his later life. Of course, an exceptional . 
child might be worthy of attention even from Jonathan Edwards,’ 
but what we are wont to call the “normal boy”’ was, to those who)’ 
saw him in the seventeenth century, most often merely a living} : 
proof of the power of the sin born in man. Until at some sober} 


later day he acknowledged God, and joined a church duly pro- 
fessing the orthodox Congregational way, he was an unfit subject 
for such a “‘life’’ as those with which the “‘Magnalia” abounds. 
Education was necessary, and the finished product was to be 
admired. The raw material was not to be borne in mind. In 
the glory of the man, the Puritan too easily forgot what had been 
the promise of the child. 

In a different age, and concerned with a being of flesh and blood 
rather than a pious lay figure, we cannot so easily pass by his 
youth. Elements of it we have already seen. His parents’ con- 
cerns, their motives and traits, were more than once reflected in 
him, and.a knowledge of them opens a loophole for a glimpse of 
the child who was the father of Increase Mather, the man. We 
have glanced, too, at events of his day in his world, and to look 
more closely is the best way to see in truer colors the determining 
conditions of his early growth. He lived in the house of a leader 
in local affairs, and to a sharp-eared boy such talk as he heard 
at home must have offered both interest and excitement. Frontier 
life, experience teaches, is not dull, and the Mather home was set 
in the midst of a frontier community. Remembering his heritage, 
and searching for the more striking incidents of the Boston and 


1. Cf, his account of Phebe Bartlett in his Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work 
of God. 


= 


36 INCREASE MATHER 


the England of the sixteen-forties, we may sketch the scene that 
figured largely in shaping the early development of a Puritan 
man of affairs. 

The first broad outlines are plain enough. Increase Mather 
was only two years old when Strafford was executed. Edgehill, 
Marston Moor, and Naseby were fought before he passed his 
sixth birthday. He may have been old enough to be stirred by 
the news which told New England that the Scots had surrendered 
the King and that the army was in possession of London. Less 
than two years later the windows of Whitehall looked out upon 
the execution of Charles I, and in the streets of Boston men 
heard the tidings, gravely conscious of their import. By 1650, 
two of Richard Mather’s sons were in England, and their letters, 
written during the events leading up to the Protectorate, must 
have given their younger brother a vivid sense of the reality 
of aftairs abroad.? Here was a safeguard against a provincial 
point of view for Increase Mather, and for us a valuable reminder 
of how closely Boston Puritans were in touch with their old home. 
The youngest of them knew how the Commonwealth arose, of 
the fighting at Dunbar and Worcester, of the fall of the Long 
Parliament before Cromwell, and how the Protectorate began 
and waxed in power. 

So also Richard Mather’s youngest son could not easily close 
his eyes to events at home. There were obvious effects from the 
cessation of emigration from England. As Winthrop writes: 
“The parliament of England setting upon a general reformation 
both of church and state, the Earl of Strafford being beheaded, 
and the archbishop (our great enemy) and many others... 1m- 
prisoned and called to account, this caused all men to stay in 
England in expectation of a new world, so as few coming to us, 
all foreign commodities grew scarce, and our own of no price.” 3 
Increase Mather may, on the other hand, have been quite uncon- 
scious of annexations to Massachusetts, of the dangers seen by 
his elders in the sway of Presbyterianism in England, or the 
political implications of the forming, in 1643, of the “United 
Colonies of New England.” 4 He was not yet four years old when 
this confederation of Plymouth, Connecticut, New Haven, and 
Massachusetts, was begun; but a few years later, even without 


2. J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, i, 78ff., 157ff.; MHS Coll., Series 4, vol. viii. 
3. J. Winthrop, History, 11, 37. 
4. Palfrey, vol. i, chap. 15; vol. 11, chaps. 4, 10. 


BOYHOOD 37 


¢ 


our perspective, he surely realized its meaning as “an act of 
absolute sovereignty on the part of the contracting states,” 5 and 
in it he must have read, as clearly as we can, the colonists’ desire 
to free congregational New England from the interference of a 
Presbyterian parliament. Surely he saw that they had seized a 
most opportune time to put through this measure so vital to their 
future.® 

Easier for a boy to grasp were the difficulties with the Indians, 
or attempts at their conversion. When he was seven years old, 
Increase Mather may have heard John Eliot preach to his 
savage converts at Dorchester.? Surely he knew of the calling 
of the Synod in 1646, for was not his own father a leader 1n its 
debates? ® Perhaps, with a boy’s feelings, he noted the now 
famous date in 1647, when by law was established in Massa- 
chusetts a system-of common schools.’ Certainly the college 
across the river held from his earliest days a share of his interest 
and respect. His older brothers graduated from Harvard while 
he was still very young, and the eldest became the first fellow of 
the College.*? Through their eyes he saw the beginnings of higher 
education in New England; by the family fireside he joined in 
the loyal mourning for the death of John Winthrop,” and, indoors 
or out, he found himself with every passing year more and more 
a part of the busy little world that to him was home. 

If town government, a school system, territorial growth, alli- 
ance with other colonies, and opposition to English rule held 
no less meaning for him than for us, if all the events of the first 
decade of his life helped to mould his view of the world, we can 
trace in even blacker ink and with a firmer hand the shaping 
influences he found in his father’s house. Here Richard Mather in 
the full tide of his power stands boldly out. His congregation, 
answering the drum or horn on Sunday morning, saw him in the 
pulpit of the meeting-house, a leader in more senses than one — 
not merely their minister but a strong figure throughout the 
commonwealth. After the prayer, and the exposition of a selec- 
tion from the Bible, they sang a psalm as he had translated it, and 


5. Palfrey, i, 630. 

6. Idem, vol. 1, chap. 15. 

7. Idem, ii, 194, 195; Lectures on Massachusetts History, pp. 305 ff. 
8. H. M. Dexter, Congregationalism, pp. 436ff. 

g. Mass. Rec., 11, 203; Palfrey, 11, 262, 263. 

10. J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, 1, 78. 

11. March 26, 1649. 


38 INCREASE MATHER 


after the long sermon, they received his blessing. In the afternoon 
they came again to pray, and to be preached to once more.” 
Accounts of such services give us a sense of mental chill, but to his 
hearers Richard Mather’s ministrations were the event of the 
week, and the warmth and vigor of his teaching gave them 
intellectual stimulus and inspiration for life. They were not 
alone in their benefits from him. In England were printed books 
from his pen; and when the Synod of 1646, or 1647, finally 
\ endorsed what we know as the “Cambridge Platform,’’—“by 
far the best statement of Congregational principles which the 
seventeenth century produced,” *— most.of the finished version 
was the product of Mather’s thought.“ ‘This “terse, clear, and 
well-balanced summary,” ™ alone would have made its author 
a father for any Puritan boy: to be proud of. Nor was he forgetful 
of wife and son, for there are recorded his’ resolutions for their 
_ welfare, his desire “to be more frequent in religious discourse and 
talk,” and his determination “to be more careful in catechising 
_children.”’. He adds ‘“‘and therefore to bestow some pains this 
way, every week once; and if by urgent occasions it be sometimes 
omitted, to do it twice as much another week.” *° 

Against the background thus outlined there is room for a more 
intimate portrait of the young Increase Mather than can be 
made from such materials as the influence of family and environ- 
ment. Like clear brush-strokes of vivid color, suddenly bringing 
out the dominant note of the picture, his own words shape our 
vision of his youth. His mother, “‘ Twice a Mother to him,” looms 
large in the tale of his early years, and*her words live worthily 
to-day. “Child,” she told him, when he was but a small boy, “‘if _ 
GOD make thee a Good Christian and a Good Scholar, thou hast 
all that ever thy Mother Asked for thee.” *? Her prayer for him 
was earnest, her confidence deep, and her love always great. 
There is no better corrective for the harsh black and white of the 
conventional likeness we cherish as that of the typical Puritan, 
than the reading of such diaries or autobiographies as Mather’s. 
They reveal how hotly the love of parent and child burned in a 


12. Cf. H. M. Dexter, Congregationalism, pp. 452ff. 

13. W. Walker, The Services of the Mathers, p. 67. 

14. I. Mather, The Life and Death, p. 87; W. Walker, Creeds and Platforms, 
Pp- 157-237- 

15. H. M. Dexter, Congregationalism, p. 438. 

16. C. Mather, Magnalia, book II], part ii, chap. 20, section 13. 

17. Parentator, p. 3; Autobiography. 


BOYHOOD 39 


world where home ties were strong, and discipline, if severe, was 
made light by loyal and devoted family life. Increase Mather 
displays his mother in the tenderest of lights. As he sat at her 
feet, learning to read, or as his father’s hand guided his in his first 
essays toward the strangely crabbed handwriting that was to be 
so ready a tool in days to come, there was moulding for his later 
career.*® But there is one sentence of his that gives the crowning 
touch. Later, his mother’s urgings toward scholarship bore fruit, 
but very precious to-day are his words: “Until I was fourteen 
years old, I had no love to, nor delight in my books.” ? True, he 
led his class, 7° but a memory of him as a boy who preferred to 
school tasks more active pursuits, is an antidote to many a mis- 
conception about the man who found an active share in worldly 
affairs always quite as appealing as quieter hours at his desk. 
His life was to lead him far from his study; his able dealings were 
to be not only with books but with men. 

Comfortably aware that we are concerned, not with a “young, 
old man” like Samuel Mather," or with a priggish and canting | 
half-grown Puritan, we may come close to understanding how 
the events and surroundings we have glanced at helped to guide 
Mather’s progress to manhood. Training began early in those 
days, and, willing pupil or not, he quickly learned to read and 
write. His father added instruction in the elements of grammar, 
both Latin and Greek.” Probably by the time he was nine or ten, 
he went regularly to the schoolhouse near the church for such 
teaching as one Henry Butler, then a student at Harvard, could 
give.23 When he was twelve he could read Cicero “ex tempore,” 
“and make and speak true Latine in Verse and Prose, suo ut aiunt 
Marte,’ and “decline perfectly the Paradigm’s of Nouns and 
Verbes in the Greek tongue.’’*4 Much else he must have learned 
from what he saw and heard, from the life of Nature so close to 
his door, and from such boyish escapades as were possible in the 
Boston of his time.?’ Surely his father’s library had its effect in 

18. Autobiography. Of his handwriting, Jeremy Belknap said: “‘It was the most 
crabbed handwriting that ever I had to decipher” (MHS Coll., Series 5, iii, 153). 

19. Autobiography. 20. [bid. 

a1. C. Mather, Magnalia, book IV, part ii, chap. 2, section 3. 

22. Autobiography. 

23. J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, 1, 297 ff. 

24. He went to Harvard “‘in the latter end of 1651” (Autobiography). See the early 
rules for admission to the college in New England’s First Fruits, p. 26. 


25. Cf. Lectures on Massachusetts History, pp. 465; A. M. Earle, Customs and 
Fashions in Old New England, chap. 1. 


40 INCREASE MATHER 


determining his tastes, though most of it he was probably too 
frankly boyish to undertake. Among his own books, preserved 
to-day, one bears an inscription dating it during his early years. 
George Downame’s “Abstract of the Duties Commanded in the 
Law of God,” in which Increase Mather wrote his name in 1651, 
was a tabular analysis of the Ten Commandments, written by a 
bishop of the English church who, although at one time, at least, a 
strong advocate of episcopacy, was ever opposed to “popery,”’ 


~ and always a thorough Calvinist. From a father’s point of view 


here was a highly satisfactory gift for a youngest son preparing 
to take by his entrance to College his first step away from home.” 
Other books he must have had before 1651, but except for the 
classics there were probably few among them which we should 
classify otherwise than as church history or theology. When 
religion was the chief topic among leaders, one could not begin 
too early to read along such lines. And, even as a boy, Mather 
must have been unfeignedly interested in many a book which we 
should cast aside as fit only for students in a narrow field.~He 
lived when intellectual life meant theological study, and current 
literature meant the newest works on religious topics. 

In England, of course, there were published during these years 
books which have not lost their power and charm. Between 1639 
and 1657 there appeared such things as the poems of Carew, 
Vaughan, Crashaw, and Waller, Herrick’s “Hesperides,” Izaac 
Walton’s “Lives” and his undying “Angler,” Browne’s “Religio 
Medici,” Baxter’s “Saints Rest,” Taylor’s “Holy Living,” 
Hobbes’s “‘De Cive” and his ‘‘Leviathan,” the “Oceana” of 
Harrington, and Milton’s “Areopagitica”’ and “Eikonoklastes.” 
Some of these Richard Mather may have bought and read. 
Others he would have rejected as idle and vain creations. Often 
the works from which we should turn most quickly are those he 
would read most eagerly and place in the hands of his son. Unfor- 
tunately, from his point of view, English literature was not 
» entirely dominated by writers of one faith, or confined to the 
business-like statement of the ideas of practical church-builders. 

America was better ordered, standards were clearly defined, and 
literature held narrowly to the interests of Mather and his fellow 
leaders in this newly created Puritan world. Publication from 
the Cambridge Press continued steadily, and the products filled 
shelves in Boston homes. There were catechisms, almanacs, and 


26. J. H. Tuttle, The Libraries of the Mathers, p. 324. For Downame, see DNB. 


BOYHOOD 41 


here and there a more pretentious book whose title reveals its 
contents. John Eliot’s “Indian Primer or Catechism” and his . 
translation of the Book of Genesis into the Indian tongue, point 
to two phases of the settlers’ contact with their predecessors on 
Massachusetts soil. In 1647 there was a new edition of the “Bay 
Psalm Book,” followed by a revised version in 1651. The next 
year there appeared “The Summe of Certain Sermons upon 
Genes: 15.6,” by Richard Mather himself, and the “Cambridge 
Platform”? was printed at the same press three years before. 
Charles Chauncy’s “Gods Mercy, shewed to his People in giving 
them a faithful Ministry and Schooles of Learning for the con- 
tinual supplyes thereof,” and John Cotton’s “Spiritual Milk for |“ 
Boston Babes in either England,” 27 by their titles alone show 
what popular interest made it worth while to print. Among such 
new books of the day, then white and crisp with the ink just dry 
on their unthumbed pages, there were sound treatises by New 
England authors, printed in England and shipped to Boston for 
the delight of the faithful there. If there came with them Thomas 
Lechford’s “‘Plain Dealing,” with its frank statement of the woes 
of Boston’s first lawyer, a man who found a theocratic régime far 
from agreeable, it was a book that Richard Mather very possibly 
kept from his son, but its influence was offset by such pamphlets 
as “‘New England’s First Fruits; In Respect first of the Indians. 
2. Of the Progresse of Learning in the Colledge at Cambridge,” 
defending as eloquently as contemporary conventions in style 
allowed, the practices of the dwellers on Massachusetts Bay. 
The unorthodoxy of Roger Williams was answered by no less a 
person than John Cotton.?® Edward Winslow, defending New 
England’s policy against such malcontents as Samuel Gorton and 
Robert Child, wrote his “Hypocrisie Unmasked.’ And, as the 
first generation of the colony was thinned by death, the deeds 
and beliefs of its leaders were recorded in what seemed at the time 
such worthy memorials as John Norton’s “The Life and Death of 
that Deservedly Famous Mr. John Cotton.” *9 

There are, moreover, three books published in Increase 
Mather’s youth which have some claim to permanence. Nathan- 


iel Ward of Ipswich, under the pseudonym of “Theodore de la “ 


») 


Guard,” wrote “The Simple Cobler of Aggawam,” and several \ 
editions appeared in England in 1647.3° Even though we read 
27. For these books, see R. F. Roden, The Cambridge Press, chaps. 3, 4, 5- 


Some nC. Lyler History, 1252-254. 
20.01 0726-D..219. 30. [bid., pp. 229-241. 


42 INCREASE MATHER 


it with complete lack of sympathy for its doctrine, and contempt 
for its denunciation of what Ward saw as the vices of his day, 
we cannot escape the discovery that in the vigor of its prose, 
violent and unbridled as it too often is, there is power undulled 
by time. If to our ears its sentences ring clear, how great must 
shave been their sound to readers in tune with the ideas expressed! 
More prosaic, and enduring for its historical value rather than 
any literary merit, is Captain Edward Johnson’s “ Wonder-Work- 
ing Providence of Sion’s Saviour in New England.” Its frank, 

matter-of-fact manner, and its striving toward transmission of 
its author’s spirit, even by such ill-judged methods as frequent 
and alarming attempts at verse, give it a flavor which has not 
lost its zest; and, as a picture of events and the age when it was 
written, the sturdy militia captain’s pages offer much worth 
reading more than once.3* But most interesting of all 1s “The 
Tenth Muse lately Sprung up in America” — that rara avis in 
colonial New-England, a book of poems. Anne Bradstreet was 
too good a Puritan not to repel us by the strong tincture of 
theology in her verse, and her choice of Du Bartas as a model 
was, by modern standards, unhappy. Yet he who reads her 
work patiently, comparing the finish of her lines, not to more 
polished metres but to those written with the resources and ideals 
that were hers, will find much to admire. The most captious must 
find imbedded here and there in the ““Tenth Muse” bits of deep 
feeling, clear picturing, and vivid fragments of authentic poetry.* 

Current books, the events of active days in the colony, and the 
inspiration of parents and home, all went into the making of the 
Increase Mather who, at twelve years old, entered Harvard. He 
still lacked, as we have seen, any preoccupation in favor of schol- 
arship,34 but the college offered him far more than a mere course 
of study designed for hopeful candidates for the pulpit. There 
were other students to live with and new teachers to guide him. 
There was a chance to add to a sound home training experience 
in a wider field. There was broader scope for his thoughts and 
ambitions, and, above all, a chance to begin for himself the shap- 
ing of a worthy inheritance into a character of individuality and 
strength. 

31. M. C. Tyler, History, 1, 137-146. 

32. Lbid., p. 282. 

Man bi4., Ppa.27 720s. 


34. He must, however, have met the rules for admission in respect to character and 
conduct. Cf. Harv. Rec., 1, 28, 29. 


CEA ERE RSI 


HARVARD COLLEGE. THE CHOICE OF A LIFE WORK 


@)" October 28, 1636, three years before Increase Mather was 
born, the General Court of Massachusetts voted £400 


>> 


“towards a schoale or colledge,” and in the next year “the most 


eminent men of the colony.”’ were appointed “to take order for_a_ 
colledge at Newetowne.”? The enterprise first took definite shape 


when there died in Charlestown an English nonconformist 


minister, one John Harvard.?, He bequeathed one half of his , 


estate, and all his books, to the college.3 This was a gift “equal to, 
if not double, that which the colony had ventured even to 


promise.” 4 His benevolence made possible the establishment of - 


the institution that still bears his name.$ 

Harvard College was first under the unworthy guidance of a 
certain Nathaniel Eaton. He was soon succeeded by Samuel 
Sheparc,° of Cambridge, whose pious care prepared the way for 
the period of wise and firm control which dated from the landing 
of Henry Dunster in the fall of 1640. The newcomer accepted 
the post of “President,” and in his achievement, his ability 
finds proof.? By charters granted in 1642 and 1650 his task was 
lightened by the appointment, first of Overseers, and then of 
five Fellows and a Treasurer. The last-named officers were sub- 
ject to the powers reserved to the Governor, Deputy-Governor, 
the magistrates of the colony, and the ministers of the six near- 
est towns, who acted as overseers or visitors of the college.® 
With them Dunster drew up rules for admission, laws, and forms 
for degrees. He secured funds for the building of a president’s 
house, and gave from his own property one hundred acres of 
land. Pursuing a wise policy in attempting to concentrate the 
pldass: Recis 1,:183, 217: 
. Cf. H. C. Shelley, ohn Harvard. 
. Quincy, i, 460, 462; New Englana’s First Fruits, pp. 23, 24. 
. Quincy, i, 9. 
Mass. Rec., 1, 253. 
. Quincy, i, 13, 14; J. Winthrop, History, 1, 370-376. 
. Quincy, i, 14-22; DNB; J. Chaplin, Life of Henry Dunster. 
. Mass. Rec., 11, 30, 1V, 12-14. 


CON AM BW DN 


~ 


44 INCREASE MATHER 


educational aspirations of all New England in Harvard, he led 
a friend to ask the Commissioners of the federated colonies to 
aid in the support of such scholars as were in need. To this 
end it was suggested that “every family throughout the planta- 
tion... contribute a fourth part of a bushel of corn or something 
equivalent thereto,” and the Commissioners recommended ac- 
cordingly. Yet in 1647 there were still uses for more money. The 
library lacked books, especially on law, philosophy, physics, and 
mathematics, and the college building was in want of repair.® 
There were constant appeals from Dunster, necessary in spite of 
gifts from far-sighted supporters; and the lack of books remained 
even after Sir Kenelm Digby and others gave freely to the 
library.*° 

To Increase Mather such a sketch of Harvard’s history would 
have been unnecessary. He had grown up with the college, and 
came from a household where its progress was eagerly watched. 
Leaving the Dorchester fireside, with his brother Eleazar,™ to 
seek for such accommodations as students could hope for in 
Cambridge, it was the physical aspect of Harvard that was of 
most interest to him. The college building was an “edifice... 
very faire and comely within and without, having in it a Spacious 
Hail... and a large Library.” ‘Chambers and Studies” were 
“fitted for and possessed by the Students, and all other roomes 
of the office necessary and convenient, with all needful offices 
thereto belonging.” * But when Increase Mather came there, 
the structure was, according to Dunster, in a decaying condition.* 
That so new a building was so soon out of repair does not speak 
well for the solidity of its construction, and gives some idea of its 
character. The President’s house stood near it, and on the next 
lot was the house of Edward Goffe, where some students were 
allowed to live. Before Increase Mather graduated, still another 
building was added to the group; for by a shrewd appeal to the 
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, money was secured for 
“the Indian college,” “built plain but strong and durable.” 
Ostensibly it was to house such Indians as found their way to 
Harvard, but, apparently, this new brick house, large enough for 
twenty scholars, was by no means preempted by the natives, and 

g. Quincy, i, 14-22 and Appendix to vol. 1. 

10. Harv. Rec., pp. 199, 200. 

11. J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, i, 405ff. 


12. New Englana’s First Fruits, p. 24. 
13. Quincy, 1, 17. 


HARVARD COLLEGE 45 


during Increase Mather’s acquaintance with it, it housed not 
only English scholars, but also the colony’s printing press.”4 

From their windows the students looked out “on a large plain, 
more than eight miles square, with a fine stream in the middle 
of it, capable of bearing heavily laden vessels.” ** The village of 
Cambridge was “‘compact closely within it selfe,” although “of 
late yeares some few stragling houses have been built.” Its 
“well ordered streets’ were “comly pompleated”** with the faire 
building of Harver Colledge.”’ 

In such surroundings Increase Mather began his work for his 
degree. Harvard offered a training not widely different from that 
afforded by English universities, and in 1651 few doubted its 


excellence.?? The college had been founded “ to advanceLearning, 


and perpetuate it to Posterity,” by men “dreading to leave an 
illiterate Ministery to the Churches”’;** but the religious aim was 
not unduly harped upon. The charter of 1642 gave power to the 
President and governing boards “to make & establish all such 
ord's, statutes, & constitutions as they shall see necessary for the 
instituting, guiding, & furthering of the said colledge & the sevrall 
memb's thereof ...in piety, morality, & learning”; and in 1650 
the object of Harvard was declared to be “the advancement of 
all good litterature, arts, and sciences” and the “‘education of the 
English and Indjan youth of this country in knowledge and godli- 
ness.” 79 Taken at their face value, such statements are not 
unsuited to a liberally minded university of to-day; nor was the 
curriculum exclusively devoted to the technicalities of religious 
education.?? In the first year were studied ‘Logic, Physics,” 
Greek Etymological Syntax,” and, in the Greek language, prac- 
tice in “‘the precepts of Grammar in such Authors as have vari- 
ety of words.’’ Additional studies were ‘Hebrew and Eastern 
Grammar,” “practise in the Bible,” “Reading of Rhetorick 
to all Scholars,” “Divinity Catecheticall,” “Common Places,” ” 
and “Declamations,” with a provision that “Every Scholler may 

14. See A. McF. Davis, The Early College Buildings; Harv. Rec., p. 208. 

15. Long Island Historical Society Memoirs, i, 384, 385; E. Johnson, History, p. 201. 

16. “Completed” ? E. Johnson, History, p. go. 

17. T. G. Wright, Literary Culture, pp. 19-22, and references given there. 

18. New England’s First Fruits, p. 23. 

19. Mass. Rec., ii, 30, iv, 12. 

20. Cf. Quincy, i, 45-48. 

21. “Natural Science in general.” Cf. New English Dictionary, “Physics,” defini- 


tion I. 
22. Exercises or theses on set themes. Cf. [éid., “Commonplace,” definition 2. 


46 INCREASE MATHER 


declaime once a moneth.” In the winter, time was given to his- 
tory, and, in summer, “the Nature of Plants” was taught. The 
second year advanced in Greek to ‘“Prosodie and Dialects,” 
“Poesy, Nonnus,* Duport,” or the like,” and Chaldee appears in 
the schedule. “Ethicks” and “Politicks” 5 replaced “Logick”’ 
and “Physics,” but the other subjects of the first year were 
studied further. In his last term the scholar learned “Arithmetic, 
Geometry and Astronomy,” and in Greek he was expected to 
“nerfect ... Theory before noone, and exercise Style, Compost- 
tion, Imitation, Epitome both in Prose and Verse, afternoone.”’ 
The year’s work was completed with the addition of “Syriack.”’ 
Predominantly linguistic and classical, with only a hint of science, 
the course led to a degree conferred when the candidate “on 
proofe” was found “‘able to read in the Originalls of the O/d and 
New Testament into the Latine tongue, and to resolve them Logi- 
cally; withall being of godly life and conversation,” provided he 
could obtain “at any publick Act... the Approbation of the 
Overseers and Master of the Colledge.” 2° Such a training, though 
admirably adapted to equip a man for the Puritan pulpit, was not 
planned for embryo divines alone. One remembers that Dunster 
sought books to aid his pupils “whose various inclinations to all 
professions might thereby be incouraged.” *7 In seventeenth- 
century eyes, Harvard’s course was by no means without breadth. / 
A glimpse at the Library confirms this. John Harvard’s bequest 
was representative of the whole collection, and a study of its 
contents gives a clue to the educated taste of the day. Three 
quarters of the books were theological, and of these perhaps half 
were commentaries on the Bible, dealing almost equally with the 
Old and New Testaments. Many sermons found a place, but 
there was little space for religious controversy. Jesuit writers 
rubbed elbows with the works of sound Puritans. The classics 
filled a good-sized shelf, and one cannot pass unnoticed Chap- 
man’s Homer and North’s Plutarch. Grammars and dictionaries, 


Greek, Hebrew, and English, flanked by “half a dozen books of 


23. Nonnus, fifth-century Greek poet, author of a paraphrase of the Gospel of St. 
John in Greek hexameters. 

24. James Duport, 1606-1679, Regius professor of Greek at Magdalene College, 
Cambridge. Cf. DNB. 

25. Probably ethics, in the public or social sense. Cf. NED. 

26. The foregoing account of the curriculum is from New Englanad’s First Fruits, 
pp. 28-30. 

27. E. Hazard, Historical Collections, ii, 86. 


HARVARD COLLEGE 47 


extracts, or phrases, as Ocland’s Anglorum Preelia, La Primaud- 
aye’s French Academy, and Peacham’s Garden of Eloquence” 
made up a section of reference works. English literature, as we 
know it, was little represented save for Bacon’s Essays, and the 
poems of Quarles and Wither, and two tracts and Camden’s 
Remaines are the insecure foundation of the collection on English 
history. A smattering of science, of scholastic philosophy, of 
logic, of medicine, and two books on law complete the literary 
mixture.?® Such a collection was not inadequate material for a 
“liberal”? seventeenth-century education,?® and Mather had 


added resources in his father’s library, and such books as he © 


owned himself.3° 

It is not in the curriculum or on the bookshelves that we find 
most evidence of Harvard’s Puritanical tone. The laws or rules 
reveal more of what we like to consider as typical early Congre- 
gational rigor. Latin was to be used at all times, the Scriptures 
were to be read so that twice a day each student could give “‘such 
an account of his proficiency therein, both in Theorettical obser- 
vations of the Language, and Logick, and in Practicall and spirit- 
uall truths, as his Tutor”? might require. He was not to forget 
that the main end of life is to know God, that Christ is the foun- 
dation of all sound learning. He must eschew “all profanation of 
God’s Name, Attributes, Word, Ordinances, and times of Wor- 
ship,” and study “to retaine God” and the love of His truth. 
Punctuality, diligence, and good behavior at lectures were de- 


manded. No student might “frequent the society of men lead-_/ 


ing an ungirt or dissolute life.” No one, without the consent of 
his tutor, or the call of his parent or guardian, might “‘goe abroad 
to other Townes.”’ Twice a day each pupil reported to his tutor, 
and gave an account of his reading. In 1650, the use of tobacco 
was forbidden except by the special consent of the President, with 
the permission of parent or guardian and the recommendation of 


a physician, and, even when allowed, smoking was to be carried. 
on “in a sober and private manner.” Public meetings or gather- 


ings during college hours were banned, and no scholar might drill 
with a military company unless he was known to be of “Gravity, 
& of approved sober & virtuous conversation.” For three weeks 


28. I have drawn my account of Harvard’s library directly from A.C. Potter’s 
Catalogue of ‘fohn Harvard’s Library, p. 192. 

ag. Cf. E. A. Savage, Old English Libraries, chaps. 6 and 7. 

30. See J. H. Tuttle, Libraries of the Mathers. 


8 


48 INCREASE MATHER 


before Commencement, on two days each week, all students of 
two or more years standing were required to sit in the Hall, “to 
be examined by all comers in the Latin, Greek and Hebrew 
tongues, and in Rhetoric, Logic, and Physics”; while candidates 
for the degree were “to be examined of their sufficiency according 
to the Laws of the College.” Breaches of discipline were punished 
by “Admonition,” and a third offence made the culprit liable to 
correction by more vigorous means, unless he were an adult, in 
which case he was reported to the Overseers for public repri- 
mand." Such laws made a world that was no Paradise for idle 
youth or for rebels against Puritan theories; but their strictness 
is more apparent in the light of present conditions than in con- 
trast with the rules of seventeenth-century universities else- 
where.” 

Admitted to Harvard, Increase Mather and his brother tran- 
scribed these College regulations and signed them, agreeing to 
keep the copy as a reminder “of the duties whereto their privi- 
ledges oblidged them.” #* Their names, as befitted their rank in 
the colonial social system, were then listed at the head of their 
class.4 What they studied and how they were disciplined we 
have seen; one would give much to know how Increase Mather 
responded to the major influences of instructors and fellow 
students. Dunster, inspecting the “manners”’ of his pupils, de- 
livering his Biblical expositions at morning and evening prayers, 
and preaching at “publick assemblies on the Lord’s day at 
Cambridge where the students”’ had “a particular gallery allotted 
unto them,” #5 may have been for some an inspiration and guide. 
' Mather’s first impressions came most vividly, however, from 
Michael Wigglesworth and John Cotton. Of the former he 
writes: “I was his Scholar at my first Admission into the Col- 
ledge’’; and “this worthy man” is called “a blessing as a Tutor.:’ 
We know Wigglesworth as a sincere and true-hearted Puritan. 
His “Day of Doom,” even in pages which seem to us incredibly 
stern, displays an earnest believer, and, for his time, no mean 
poet. Surely there burned in his infirm body eternally valid 
, 31. For the college rules, see New England’s First Fruits; Quincy, 1, 515ff.; and Haro. 

ec. . 190. 

Ponce for example, J. B. Mullinger, Cambridge Characteristics in the Seventeenth 
Century, chap. 2. 

33. C. Mather, Magnalia, book IV, part i, section 4. 

34. Cf. Harvard University Quinquennial Catalogue, 1920, p. 135 Nn. 


35. C. Mather, Magnalia, book IV, part i, section 4. 
36. I. Mather, Introduction, in C. Mather, 4 Faithful Man Described. Boston, 1705. 


HARVARD COLLEGE 49 


qualities of soul.37 He was a man who could appeal to his pupils’ 
hearts; the other whose impression on Increase Mather is recorded 
was of a sort to stimulate a student’s mind. John Cotton wrote 
and preached vigorously reasoned doctrine, and made his abilities 
felt in church and state. Austere he seems to us, largely from the 
beliefs he taught. To his contemporaries he was an example in 
learning, and a leader in thought. To Richard Mather he had 
been adviser and comforter; to his son he was a figure whose 
memory endured. “Although I had little of personal acquain- 
tance with Mr. Cotton, being a child not above thirteen years old 
when he died, I shall never forget the last sermon which he 
preached at Cambridge, and his particular application to the 
scholars there, amongst whom I was then a student newly 
admitted.”’ 3° 

No word of Mather’s hints at the education he gained from his 
contact with other students. We know that in college with him 
were such men as Thomas Shepard, later a force in colonial 
affairs, Samuel Nowell, to become in after years Treasurer of 
Harvard, Gershom Bulkeley, the Connecticut physician and sur- 
geon, John Cotton the younger, later united to Mather by a 
family bond, Robert Paine, believed to have been the foreman 
of the jury which years afterward tried the Salem witches, 
Thomas Graves, the Charlestown physician, who became 
Mather’s opponent on points of doctrine and went so far as to 
uphold Andros during the revolt against his rule, and Elisha 
Cooke, who was to clash with Mather more than once during their 
joint embassy to England in 1690.39 Such a list, chosen at random, 
contains a few whose potentialities may well have been great 
enough to mark them in youth. There were others, of course, for 
in the three years from 1657 to 1659 twenty-four men took their 
degrees. Of these, nearly two thirds became ministers, and others 
taught or preached for a time.4° However little we have in exact 
records, we cannot escape the fact that there were abundant and 
varied human influences in Mather’s Harvard, nor can we doubt 
what type of aspiration was most common in this little world. 

In his own case, circumstances decreed that the formal routine 

37. Cf. J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, 1, 259f.; J. W. Dean, Sketch of the Life of 
Rev. Michael Wigglesworth; and M. C. Tyler, History of American Literature, ii, 27-35. 

38. I. Mather, Preface to C. Mather, “Johannes in Eremo,” in Magnalia, book II, 
part i. 


39. Cf. J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, vol. i. For Cooke, see pp. 229ff. post. 
40. Sibley, vols. 1, ii. 


5° INCREASE MATHER 


of the college should not be his. The greatest turning-points of 
these years, supremely important for his later life, came else- 
where than within college walls. Some time at the end of 1652, 
his parents, fearing for his health and distrusting particularly the 
diet furnished the students, sent him to Ipswich to continue his 
work toward the degree under the minister of that town, John 
Norton. It was a momentous change. Norton is labelled to-day 
stern, fiercely bigoted, and absolutely convinced of his own 
infallibility, undeterred by doubt, and unrestrained by pity,® 
but he was known in his own time as “Thou Noble Norton,” and 
praised in such lines as 


But Christ hath given his blessing from above 
Unto thy workes the World with light to fill.4 


He is best seen as one of the most complete embodiments of the 
thoroughgoing Puritan character. Intolerant, cruel in his treat- 
ment of foes of the commonwealth, hot-tempered, and implacably 
strict in his tenets, he was a diligent student and a learned writer, 
and, to those of his faith, a strong leader and a cherished friend. 
For Increase Mather he was one “whose memory I have peculiar 
cause to love and honour.” 4 Already distinguished as the author 
of the first Latin book written in Massachusetts, he was soon 
to be chosen as Cotton’s successor in the first church at Boston, 
and won further honor, and a chance for even greater service, in 
his appointment as an agent from the colony to the king.© His 
fame in 1652, and his clear promise of further achievement, were 
sufficient to mark him in Richard Mather’s mind as an ideal 
teacher for his son. There were closer ties, too, between Mather 
in Dorchester, and Norton in Ipswich; for the latter had helped 
his colleague through a period of mental unrest, and we know 
that “Mr. Mather... consulted him as an oracle... and found 
him so accomplished and experienced a person, that he main- 
tained a most valuable friendship with him to the last.” ”” 

4t. J. L. Sibley, i, 410. In his Autobiography Mather says that he went to Ipswich 
after he had lived in Cambridge “about a year.” The last quarter bill against him in the 
Steward’s Account Books of the College is, according to Sibley, 1, 405, dated 10-10-52 
(Dec. 10, 1652). 

42. Parentator, p.6. Autobiography refers to the college diet. 

43. J. T. Adams, The Founding, p. 259. 

44. E. Johnson, History, p. 104. 


45. See note 38, ante. 


46. Cf. DNB; T. Hutchinson, Collection, ii, 65-93; C. Mather, Magnalia, book III, 
part 1, chap. 2. 


47. Ibvid., book III, part i, chap. 2, section 13. 


HARVARD COLLEGE 51 


When Increase Mather began his life under Norton’s roof in 
the “good Haven Towne” of Ipswich, with its “faire built” 
houses “with pleasant Gardens and Orchards,” 4® he was, one 
remembers, although “free from any Scandalous Outbreakings of 
Immorality,... nothing more than outwardly Moral.” 4 (In 


YY other words, he was a boy without zeal for learning, though of 


good ability, and was possessed of no consuming passion for 
religion and its works. The college, with its aspirants for the 
ministry, its exhortations from prominent divines, and its theo- 
logical training, may well have done much to make him tinder 
easy to kindle to a blaze of religious devotion. John Norton was 
admirably fitted to carry on the process, and instil the feelings 
and ambitions that made ministers of Boston boys. Yet the 
final spark came not from training or teachers, but from a sudden 
bitter taste of life. 
The story is best told in Increase Mather’s own words: 


In the year 1654, the Lord in mercy visited me with a sore disease> ) , 
which was apprehended to be the stone... . I was soon (by the Lord’s _ 


blessing) recovered. This sickness set me upon prayer to God, and 
_caused me to reform many vain, wild courses and extravagances of 
my life. Also, from this time I became very studious, which before I 
had not been. Nevertheless, after some months of health I began to 
~ forget God again, though not so as in the former years of my child- 
hood & vanity. But in the latter end of that year, God took away my 
dear mother, who had so often prayed for me. About which time the 
Lord broke in upon my conscience with very terrible convictions and 


awakenings. In the months of March & April, and in the latter end 


of May, 1655, I was in extremity of anguish and horror in my soul. 


Once at Dorchester, when my father was gone abroad on a public — 


occasion, and not to return for a day or two, I shut myself up in his 
study, and wrote down all the sins which I could remember I had been 


guilty of that lay as a heavy burden on my spirits. I brought them — 


before God, and cried to him for pardoning mercy; and at night 


burnt the paper which in way of confession I had sorrowfully spread 


before the Lord. Everyone observed that I was strangely changed. 

Some of my companions derided me for my now strictness and tender 

conscience. I acquainted no man with my troubles, save only that 

I wrote some letters from Boston °° to my father, telling him what 
48. E. Johnson, History, p. 96. 


49. Parentator, p.6. 
50. Norton was then living in Boston. 


a 


52 INCREASE MATHER 


anguish my soul was in, and desiring his earnest prayers to God for 
me. I wished for another opportunity to spend a day in secret prayer 
and fasting before the Lord, to humble myself for all my past trans- 
gressions. I knew that on the election day, the other scholars who 
boarded with me at Mr. Norton’s would be from home; & therefore I 
resolved to spend that time from morning to night, where none but 
God should see. Accordingly I went into a little garret of Mr. Norton’s 
study, & shut the door. And all the family being abroad, I poured 
out my soul in complaints before God that day. I prayed to God that 
he would show me mercy. At the close of the day, as I was praying, I 
gave myself up to Jesus Christ, declaring that I was now resolved to 
be his servant, I his only, and his forever; and humbly professed to 
him that if I did perish, I would perish at his feet. Upon this I had 
ease and inward peace in my perplexed soul immediately; and from 
that day I walked comfortably for a considerable time, and was care- 
ful that all my words and ways should be such as would not offend 
God.” 


Sickness, and the first sight of death, were then as now reagents 
powerful in awakening religious feeling in a youthful soul. The 
nal touch came with his dying mother’s last request. Reminding 
him of the text, “They that turn many to righteousness shall 
’ shine as the stars for ever and ever,” she urged him to enter the 
ministry. The sight of her dead face, and the memory of her 
voice fresh in his ears, completed the first great stage in his 
education. Never in future was he to be in doubt as to his goal. 

The rest of his period of training served simply to confirm his 
clear vision of his aim. In Boston, after Norton came there in 
April, 1653,3 he carried on his work with the new interest that 
came from the sudden crystallization of his purpose. There were 
changes in the college to watch, for Dunster had fallen into “the 
snares of Anabaptism,” *4 and for daring to express his views was 
forced in October, 1654, to resign the presidency. John Norton 
and Richard Mather were the two men chosen to ask Charles 
Chauncy to fill the vacant place. That this mission of his father 

51. Autobiography. 52. Lota. 

53. C. Mather, Magnalia, book III, part i, chap. 2, sections 19, 20. Norton probably 
lived at the present corner of Washington and Milk streets, in the house formerly 
occupied by John Winthrop. Cf. Memorial History of Boston, i, 481 n., and H. A. Hill, 
History of the Old South Church, Wr he a & 

54. C. Mather, Magnalia, book IV, part i, section §. 

55. See references in note 7, ante. 


56. Harv. Rec., pp. 206, 207. 


THE CHOICE OF A LIFE WORK 53 


and his instructor was successful cannot have failed to interest 
Increase Mather. The new President, his leanings toward Eng- 
land conquered, and his doubts as to salary set at rest,37 bound 
himself to silence as to such of his beliefs as were unorthodox for 
the time and place. He was a man known in his day for unques- 
tioned learning, and his inaugural address, and his diligent admin- 
istration, won general praise.58 

For Increase Mather a more immediate influence was Jonathan 
Mitchell. As a boy he had come from England on the Yames with 
Richard Mather, and, still a young man, was now minister in 
Cambridge and tutor in the college. To one pupil, at least, his 
teaching was a delight; and even late in life Mather remembered 
him and spoke of him in the warmest tones.5? A hard student 
and a learned preacher, he was beloved for the human qualities of 
meekness and charity clearly discernible in all we read of him. 
For a young aspirant for the ministry, in the first blush of fervor, 
one could not choose a better guide. The charm of his personality 
was needed to aid in overcoming the annoyance caused to Increase 
Mather by the delaying of his graduation for a year. His father, 
too, insisted that he remain to take his degree,even though others 
of his classmates left in protest against the new rule which 
lengthened the college course;® and, finally, in 1656 © he returned 
to Cambridge, and, probably on August 12,% he took his first 
degree as Bachelor of Arts.® 

Cotton Mather tells of the presentation of his father’s thesis. 
The picture strikingly sums up a few of the chief elements of 

57. Quincy, i, 466, 467. | 

58. Cf. DNB; MHS Coll., Series 1, x, 171-180; and C. Mather, Magnalia, book III, 
part ii, chap. 23, and book IV, part i, section 5. 

$9. Autobiography; J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, i, 141-157; and C. Mather, 
Magnalia, book IV, part ii, chap. 4, Epistle Dedicatory. 

60. Autobiography; Parentator, p.14,speaks of “some reasons of state” as causing the 
lengthening of the course. A. Matthews (“Harvard Commencement Days, 1642-1916,” 
in Colonial Society Publications, xviii, 309ff.) says that, in 1653, the course of study was 
changed from three to four years. There was a double Commencement in 1653. The 
Autobiography gives, as reasons for the change: “‘the President, being desirous to keep 
the students as long in the College as might be, and some other reasons occurring,” 
Sibley gives, in Appendix to vol. 1, a list of all men of whom record is preserved as 
members of the college from 1642 to 1658. Several of these, contemporaries of Mather, 
took no degree, and they may be those said to have left because of the lengthening of 
the course. 

61. dutobiography; Parentator, p.14. 

62. That is, the second Tuesday in August. Cf. Colonial Society Publications, xviii, 
300ff. 

63. Harvard University Quinquennial Catalogue, p. 136. 


54 INCREASE MATHER 


Increase’s early life.“ We read that the President “upon a Dis- 
like of the Ramean Strains in which our Young Disputant was 
carrying on his Thesis, would have cut him Short, but Mr. Mitchel 
Publickly Interposed, Pergat, Qua«so, Nam-doctissime disputat.” 
Peter Ramus, the greatest French philosopher of the sixteenth 
century, a brilliant and useful educational reformer, who pre- 
pared the way for many later developments in thought, princi- 
pally by freeing men’s minds from the “yoke of Aristotle,” had 
early impressed Richard Mather.® Michael Wigglesworth, the 
beloved tutor, studied him, and fell under the spell of the 
“Ramcean” confidence in the power of reason and in the obser- 
vation of human nature as the basis of philosophy.® His com- 
mencement, then, reveals in Increase Mather the force of home 
training, the effect of a favorite teacher, and the courage to 
defend a thesis unwelcome to a President firmly wedded to 
Aristotelian theories.§? It is significant, too, that his most recent 
tutor saw promise in his pupil, and intervened to save him from 
interruption. Such a scene picks out some of the threads we have 
followed in the story of his youth, and closes fittingly enough the 
record of these early years. 

Leaving college behind him, he faced experiences and tasks 
which were to lead to further development and expansion of his 
nature. With the rest of his generation, he had seen the estab- 
. lishment of institutions for which he was to fight as for the ideals 
of youth. Much that grew in his early days was to endure. 
Much else was to change, or, perhaps, to vanish before the shifting 
ideas of a newer day. For him, as for those who were boys with 
him, was the labor of warding off, on the one hand, a desire to 
cling rigidly to all that he grew up with, and, on the other, the 
temptation to follow too readily innovators whose necessary 
work threatened much that was better left unmarred. To such 
problems he brought a character hewn from good material, forged 
in the fire of Puritan home life and education, and tempered by 
the chill shock of sickness and bereavement. With his realization 
of a goal in life, came the power to turn the steel of his nature 
toward a definite end. Further polishing there was to be, further 


64. The scene is not alluded to in Autobiography, but is described in Parentator, 
pp- 14, 15. 

65. C. Waddington, Ramus, pp. 10, 399, 4003 I. Mather, The Life and Death, p. 49. 

66. J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, 1, 267. 

67. Parentator, p. 14. 


THE CHOICE OF A LIFE WORK 55 


‘sharpening from learning, travel, and contact with men; but 
before he left college there was shaped a personality strong as a 
well-balanced blade. With it he was to cut through the thronging 
events of the next half-century and more, the broad pathway of a 
vigorous and useful life. 


CHAPTER VII 


EXPERIMENTAL YEARS 
ENGLAND, IRELAND, AND GUERNSEY 


aloes whole Auditory were greatly Affected with the Light 
and Flame, in which the Rare Youth Appear’d unto them.” ° 
So writes his loyal son of Increase Mather’s second sermon, 
preached on Sunday, June 28, 1657, in his father’s church at 
Dorchester.t A week earlier, on June 21, his eighteenth birthday, 
he had made his first appearance in the pulpit, “at a Village be- 
longing to Dorchester,” and had chosen for his text, “And Enoch 
walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.”” His second 
sermon was preached on the sixth verse of the ninth chapter of 
St. John, “concerning the excellency of Christ.”” His account of 
its reception is brief: ““The Lord was pleased to give great accept- 
ance of my labors with serious Christians. Some did, with many 
tears, thank me & bless me.”’ ? 

How his time had been spent since he graduated in August of 
the previous year, is not recorded. Probably he lived in Dor- 
chester in his father’s house. There was plenty to occupy him. 
- Family changes had taken place, for on August 26, 1656, Richard 
Mather had married John Cotton’s widow, and her daughter, 
Maria, came with her to her new home.3 New faces by his fireside, 
his new zeal for learning, and the affairs of a busy period in the 
colony, were quite enough to absorb Increase Mather in the 
winter of 1656 and 1667. 

Puritanism had now gripped firmly the reins of authority in 
Massachusetts, and with an assured control, came naturally 
increased strictness in the exercise of power. This is summed up 
in the persecution of the Quakers, which began in 1656 and ran 
its course for several years.. Discussion has raged on all sides 
of the affair. Defenders of the Puritans have harped upon the 
civil disturbances caused by the strenuous seventeenth-century 
Quaker, so different from all that later centuries have taught 

1. Parentator, p. 15. 


2. Autobiography. 
3. S. G. Drake, The Pedigree of the Family of Mather. 


EXPERIMENTAL YEARS 57 


us to associate with his sect; and persecutions elsewhere have 
been pointed out, to show that New England was not alone in 
her methods, however ill-advised, and worse, they seem. Others 
have sought truth by neglecting the persecutors’ explanation 
of their motives, in favor of the complaints of the victims.4 One 
may most safely rest his case to-day with some such statement 
as that of Hutchinson: “The most that can be said for our ances- 
tors is, that they tried gentler means at first, which they found 
utterly ineffectual, and that they followed the examples of the 
authorities in most other states and in most ages of the world, 
who, with the like absurdity, have supposed every person could 
and ought to think as they did, and when [with?] the like cruelty 
have punished such as appeared to differ from them. We may 
add, that it was with reluctance that these unnatural laws were 
carried into execution.” § Beyond this, later history has not gone, 

For us the point of view is to be that of 1657. We must remem- 
ber that for a Boston citizen of the year to punish a Quaker was 


not mere idle cruelty, but necessary defence of the integrity of | 


his state. Placed in the shoes of a leader of the time, believing 
as he did, and equipped with his understanding of his position 
in the community, and the purpose of that community, any one 
of us would have acted much as he did. And it is helpful, too, 
to bear in mind that, even while Puritanism reigned, men saw 
the errors of their past. Cotton Mather, so often a stalking horse 
for the darker side of his times, writes of the Quaker persecution: 
“If any man will appear in the vindication of it, let him do as he 
please; for my part I will not.” ® He surpasses some later writers 


in being able not only to see the wrong that was done, but to . 


realize what seemed the need for it. 

As for Increase Mather, a Puritan diligently preparing for the 
~ priesthood,” instinct with hot belief in his creed and with desire 
for its success, he might well have seen the first attacks upon the 
Quakers, not as the opening of a dark page of cruelty, but as the 
beginning of a crusade against evil. Yet the only record we have 
of his views shows him as more moderate than his times. His son 


4. J. T. Adams, The Founding, seems to me to neglect unduly the civil disturbances 
of the Quakers, and to cite, except for the formal records of the laws passed, only works 
written from the Quaker point of view. If these are to be considered, surely the argu- 
ments urged by the Puritans in their own defence should be read also. Cf. also, Palfrey, 
li, 461, 483, and Lectures on Massachusetts H istory, pp. 75 ff. 

5. I. Hutchinson, History, i, 198. 

6. Magnalia, book VII, chap. 4, section 2; Parentator, PP: 57, 58. 


58 INCREASE MATHER 


tells us “Mr. Mather... little Approved some Unadvised and 
Sanguinary Things that were done by them who did all; particu- 
larly, the Rash Things done unto the Quakers.” ’ If this be refuted 
as partisan testimony, one has only fancy left to guide, and a 
guess that he was temperate in his views is quite as valuable as 
one that he was not. 

On other matters we have surer evidence. His thoughts were 
turning from New England to his brothers abroad. Nathaniel 
was at Barnstaple in Devonshire, and Samuel preached in Dub- 
lin.8 The former had written: “Tis incredible what an advantage 
it is to have been a New English man”; and the latter urged 
that Increase be sent to him in Ireland.’ This influence was 
supported elsewhere. Of the Harvard graduates before 1656, 
more than one third went back to England at some time after 
leaving college.t? Clearly the mother country was believed to 
hold opportunity for nonconformists from the colonies,.and there 
is here more than a hint that Englishmen in New England were 
English still. Most naturally, a student, after draining Harvard's 
resources, looked enviously toward the older universities and 
crowded libraries across the sea. 

For Increase Mather, his brother’s call to Ireland must have 
had especial appeal. That country, since the Marquis of Ormond 
surrendered Dublin to the Parliament, had been a favorite field 
for the sowing of Puritan seed.* Cromwell’s commissioners 
were sent there to propagate the Gospel, to encourage preachers, 
and to advance learning, and they had repeatedly sought to 
enlist in their cause ministers from England and the Puritan’ 
colonies abroad.2 From its foundation Trinity College, Dublin, 
had Puritanical leanings, and it was now a centre of Parliamen- 
tarian interest.3 Samuel Mather was a fellow, John Owen a 
trustee, and, in Puritan circles, its provost, Samuel Winter, was 
widely and favorably known. A chance for further study, for 


7. Parentator, p. 57. 

i See lives of Samuel and Nathaniel Mather in J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, 
vol. 1. 

g. MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 5; Autobiography; Parentator, p. 15. 

10. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, vol. 1. 

11. Cf., in general, St. J. D. Seymour, The Puritans in Ireland. 

12. Idid., pp. 62, 63, 103, 113, and references there given. 

13. W. M. Dixon, Trinity College, Dublin; W. Urwick, The Early History of Trinity 
College; and J. P. Mahaffy, dn Epoch in Irish History. 

14. J. W. Stubbs, History of the University of Dublin, pp. 8off.; Mahaffy, pp. 293ff. 
For Owen, see DNB. For Winter, see references given in note 24, post, and DNB. 


EXPERIMENTAL YEARS 59 


the beginning of his career in surroundings where the leaders, 
among them his own brother, thought as he did, cannot have 
failed to interest Increase Mather. Its attractiveness may well 
have outweighed for him such trifling drawbacks as the fact that, 
in Ireland as in New England, Quakers were proving themselves 
foes, to be banished or jailed.t* Whether or not his longing for 
England in preference to the colonies, a desire dominant through 
much of his later life, played a part as early as this, there was 
sufficient reason for his feeling “a marvellous inclination & bent 
of spirit” toward Dublin.*® 

On July 3, 1657, he sailed from Boston. His father blessed him, 
and they both wept at parting, “not expecting to see one another . 
_ again in this world.”!7 Probably Increase Mather believed, as 
~ he began his five weeks’ voyage, that he had looked for the last 
time on the clustering houses of Boston. 

From Massachusetts to the England of Evelyn and Pepys was 
a change calculated to impress any voyager, however prepared 
by education or insight into current affairs. Mather arrived in 
London at a time when Cromwell’s power seemed safe, when the 
English church had succumbed before the Puritans, yielding some 
of its choicest monuments to be defaced by their too zealous 
hands, and when the intrigues of Charles II seemed least destined 
for success. Yet Royalist feeling was by no means dead, and in 
proportion to the greater stakes involved, the elements hostile to 
the beliefs of the Mathers were more varied and more in force 
than in rigidly controlled New England. All this was intellec- 
tually stimulating, and an age that boasted of a Hobbes, a Her- 
bert, and a newly founded Royal Society, cannot have been 
sterile of inspiration to an active-minded youth. In literature, 
John Milton is a name to conjure with, and Thomas Fuller, 
Archbishop Ussher, and Jeremy Taylor represent religious con- 
troversy with dignity and force. Herrick, Carew, Vaughan — 
valued still for elements of perennial charm — were then vilified 
or praised according to their readers’ individual views. English 
prose was driving strong roots, newspapers were springing up 
here and there, and all the tangled social forces of a period of 
political upheaval were manifested in the external features of 
the day. From a historical standpoint, the ten years before the 


15. Seymour, pp. 131, 133. 
16. Autobiography. 
17. [bid.; Parentator, p. 16. 


60 INCREASE MATHER 


Restoration offer unlimited scope for study; to a colonial visitor 
they must have been at once confusing and absorbing. For 
Mather, of paramount importance was the dominance of the 
type of worship which he had been taught to uphold. Dissensions 
in politics and the undercurrent of enmity from religious foes, 
however vividly seen in the light of later days, were, at the time, 
hardly more than half-heard rumblings beneath the surface of a 
righteously ordered world. 

He landed at Portsmouth, and rode thence to London. After a 
fortnight there, he continued his journey to Lancashire, where 
his father’s friends warmly welcomed him. They entertained him 
until September, when he sailed from Liverpool to Dublin. 
Samuel Mather had not seen his brother for more than seven 
years, and so different was Increase at eighteen from the Dor- 
chester schoolboy whom his brother remembered, that he had to 
introduce himself with the letters he had brought. Once recog- 
nized, he was greeted with affectionate hospitality by his brother 
and his sister-in-law. Under their guidance he lost no time in 
turning his visit to account by beginning study at Trinity 
Colleges? 

Nothing of the seventeenth-century Trinity College remains 
to-day. A small quadrangle of red brick buildings then limited 
the activities of some two hundred students; but even the wide 
view from the windows is now greatly changed. Formally opened 
in 1593, the college, under various leaders, among them Bishop 
Laud himself, had grown in importance. In 1657 its directors 
were Puritans, and its rules, like those of Harvard, were strict. 
The curriculum, too, did not differ widely from Harvard's, and 
its emphasis was on the classics. Candidates for the Master's 
degree studied mathematics, and “performed . . . exercises in Dis- 
putations, Orations, &c., required by the statutes of the college.” * 
In the library were more than four thousand books,?° and in this, 
as in other respects, Trinity must have seemed to a New Eng- 
lander the gate of opportunity. 

With Increase Mather, studied or taught several who later 
climbed some few steps toward fame.™ No one of them seems, 
however, to have been of more than passing interest to him. 
The provost, Samuel Winter, left a deeper mark, and his son, 


18. Autobiography. 


1g. Dixon, pp. 12, 80, 78 n., 79 n., and chaps. 1, 3, 45 Stubbs, pp. 44, 45. 
20. Dixon, p. 221. 
a1. Urwick, pp. 73-83. \ 


ENGLAND, IRELAND, GUERNSEY 61 


Josiah, a classmate of Mather’s, came completely under the spell 
of this stranger from overseas.” Samuel Winter has been called 
in our time “at once a shrewd man of business, an energetic 
worker in things spiritual and temporal, and a godly divine, broad- 
minded to a degree that can scarcely be realized, especially by 
those who lump the Puritans of the Commonwealth together, 
and imagine that their outstanding features were hypocrisy, love 
of names compounded of Biblical texts, and nasal psalmody.” 5 
A seventeenth-century biographer confirms this estimate, as does 
Winter’s own notebook.*% If narrowness and intolerance were 
fostered in Boston, there was an antidote here in Dublin. And, 
if Winter was of influence with Increase Mather, his brother 
Samuel also was a guide to him; and Samuel too is remembered 
for broadness of mind on at least one occasion, “when the power 
was put into his hands to attack the Episcopalian clergy both in 
Dublin and Cork,” and he “refused to do so, on the ground that , 
he had been called into Ireland to preach the Gospel, not to © 
hinder others from doing it.” *5 

There was to be discipline other than that of contact with 
human forces and college rules; for in October Increase Mather’s 
work was delayed by the measles, and in the next month came 
the smallpox.” Moreover, it was the “severest winter that any 
man alive had known in England. The crowes feete were frozen 
to their prey. Islands of ice inclos’d both fish and fowl frozen, 
and some persons in their boates.” 27 In spite of all, on June 24 
Mather had completed his course, and ‘ ‘proceeded Master of .. 
piris.,, 7° 

At the ceremony there cropped out dramatically one of the 
ledges that underlay his Puritanism, for he stoutly refused to_ 
wear cap or hood, and managed to convert another student to 
his principles. He was undeterred by the proctor, or by the 
scholars who jeered at him as a “Precisian.” But, when it came 
to his formal part in the exercises, he tells us that many were so 

22. Autobiography. 

23. Seymour, p. 28. 

24. J. W., The Life...of...Dr. Winter. Was the author Josiah Winter, or, as 
DNB suggests, Winter’s brother-in-law, Weaver? Winter’s notebook is in MS. at 
Trinity College library. It is described in Seymour, pp. xiii, 36ff. 

25. Ibid., pp. 39,91; C. Mather, Magnalia, book IV, part 1i, chap. 2, section 9. Cf. 
also, MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 549, 550. 

26. Autobiography; Parentator, p. 17. 

27. J. Evelyn, Diary, March 7, 1658. 

28. Autobiography; Parentator, p.17. 


62 INCREASE MATHER 
pleased with him that they “did publicly Hum” him, a vanity 


which he “never saw practised before nor since.” *9 

It has been suggested that “humming” was a sign of derision 
rather than of favor,3° and that the demonstration was miscon- 
strued by its object. Certainly it would not be surprising if this 
New Englander, with all the confidence of nineteen years, and 
the obstinacy to stand out against cherished collegiate forms, by 
no means robust, and endowed with ideas far narrower than those 
of his fellows, failed to win their hearts. It is so much the greater 
tribute to him if the humming was kindly meant; and, whether 
it was or not, Winter’s treatment of him shows that, however 
the students felt, the provost had no doubts. 

From him came to Mather an appointment as “Fellow” * of 
the college. The office was refused, but the Lord Deputy and 
Commissioners were not behindhand, and they gave him a place 
as preacher at Magherafelt, an Ulster town. Though it was but 
a mere handful of houses with “a few straggling people,” and its 
church was still in ruins from the Rebellion of 1641,” 1t was at 
least a parish of his own. Thither he set out, but at Dundalk he 
fell sick, and, discouraged, came back to Dublin.% 

Three illnesses in a year led him to decide that the “moist 
Irish air” did not agree with him, and his thoughts turned to 
England. Henry Cromwell assured him that he should never 
want encouragement in Ireland; but more attractive was the 
news that his brother Nathaniel had secured for him an invitation 
to settle at Sedwells in Exeter.33 There was temptation in the 
memory that, as Ireland was to New England, so England was to 
Ireland, in respect to opportunities for learning and power. To 
neglect an interest in such considerations as this is to make unin- 
telligible much of Mather’s life. To remember them is not to 
think of him as merely ambitious, but simply as faithful to his 
aim. If God’s work was worth doing at all, the greater the posi- 

29. Autobiography. 

30. DNB, article “Increase Mather.” 

31. The Autobiography says: “The fellows in the college are chosen... by the other 
fellows; only it is in the power of the Provost to choose one”’; but it is not clear from the 
Statutes that the Provost ever had such power. It may well have been Winter's 
influence which procured the appointment, or the word ‘‘Fellow” here may be used to 
mean simply “tutor.” Mr. Albert Matthews tells me that he has some evidence of 
the use of “Fellow” in this sense at Harvard, previous to this time, and Mather may 
have written with this meaning in mind. 

32. Seymour, p. 113; Autobiography; Parentator, p. 18; and W. H. Maitland, History 


of Magherafelt, pp. 1-5, 6, 36. 
33. Autobiography; Parentator, p. 18. 


ENGLAND, IRELAND, GUERNSEY 63 


tion of him who carried it on, and the broader his field, the more 
acceptable his success. 

In July, 1658, Mather arrived in London. There he met a man 
whose friendship was to last for many years and to play a part in 
his later career. At the present juncture, too, it proved of great 
service. John Howe * had been ordained some years before at 
Winwick, and it may have been through Richard Mather’s 
friends there that he came to know Increase. He was a man hold- 
ing a position of unique power among nonconformists, for he had 
been domestic chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, and the new Pro- . 
tector, Richard, continued him in office at Whitehall. Tall and 
graceful, this Puritan who “preached incomparably”’ and salted 
his talk with occasional bits of humor, inveighed sturdily against 
the fanatical notions of the court, quite undeterred by the senti- 
ment of his hearers. For this he seems to have won respect. 
Certainly he had power enough to be an able champion at 
Whitehall of such men as Bishop Ward of Salisbury, and Thomas 
Fuller. 

He had been curate at Great Torrington in Devonshire when 
he first preached before Cromwell. Though the length of his 
sermon quite exhausted the patience of his intrepid listener, it 
was of a quality that won him his high post by the Protector’s 
side. With characteristic independence, he longed for a humbler 
sphere. Courtiers, even of the Roundhead stamp, were not so 
amenable to his teaching as simple country folk in Devon, and 
he never ceased to long for Torrington. Indeed, he insisted that 
he be allowed to spend a quarter of each year there, and that he 
be authorized to appoint a substitute with full salary to conduct 
his favorite parish in his absence.* 

When Increase Mather returned from Ireland, Howe was still 
in London, still uneasy there, but still persuaded to remain by 
such advisers as Richard Baxter. Like Winter, he saw promise 
in the young student from New England and he suggested that 
he go as his substitute in Torrington.37 Nathaniel Mather was 
not so powerful a man as Howe, nor was Sedwells so good a post 
as the Devonshire parish. So Increase writes: “I... spent the 

34. See DNB, and E. Calamy, Life of John Howe, prefixed to the London, 1724, 
edition of Howe’s works. 

35. R. Thoresby, Diary, i, 295, 296. 

36. For these details as to Howe, see references in note 34, and J. P. Hewlett, Intro- 


duction, in his edition of Howe’s writings. 
37. Autobiography. 


64 INCREASE MATHER 


following winter in Torrington for the most part, only one month 
I continued with my brother Nathaniel, who was the preacher 
at Barnstaple,” but nine miles away. Torrington was historic 
ground, as the scene of a Puritan victory, and from its hilltop 
commanded a broad view of the rolling country of a lovely dis- 
trict of Devon. But neither this village, nor the harbor town of 
Barnstaple with its fresh memories of seafaring hardihood, offered 
permanent settlement. 

Oliver Cromwell had died in the autumn of 1658, and his suc- 
cessor, Richard, was quickly in difficulties. On April 22, 1659, he 
was forced to dissolve Parliament, and a month later he abdi- 
cated. With his going, Howe became free to return to Torrington. 
Mather, and his faithful brother, Nathaniel, must have foreseen 
the turn of events. During the winter the latter seems to have 
approached his father-in-law, William Benn,%? minister of All 
Saints Church, in Dorchester, Dorset, disciple of John White to 
whom New England owed so much,‘ and an influential Puritan, 
and interested him in Increase’s welfare. Certainly Benn recom- 
mended *# the young preacher to Colonel Bingham, Governor of 
Guernsey, who sought a chaplain for the English garrison in the 
island. The place was offered to Increase Mather. He accepted 
it, and by April, 1659, when Evelyn wrote: “A wonderfull and 
suddaine change in y° face of y* publiq...several pretenders 
and parties strive for ye government: all anarchy and confusion; 
Lord have mercy on us,” “3 Mather was safely out of England.“ 

At Guernsey he was quartered in grim old Castle Cornet, long 
a stronghold of the Royalists against the island folk.“* There he 
preached to the garrison each Sunday morning, and, in the after- 
noon, rowed ashore to hold service in the Town Church on the 
waterfront of “Petersport.”” The laxity of the time and place 
evoked earnest sermons on the fourth commandment, and he 

38. For Torrington and Barnstaple, cf. J. B. Gribble, Memorials of Barnstaple; 
R. Polwhele, History of Devonshire, iii, 412, 413; T. Westcote, 4 View of Devonshire in 
1630, pp. 327, 328; and R. N. Worth, History of Devonshire, chap. 18. 

39. See DNB; Nonconformist’'s Memorial, ii, 126; MHS Coll., Series 4, vill, 31 n.5 
and ve Densham and J. Ogle, The Story of the Congregational Churches of Dorset, 

LG Ie. 

a ao, Tid. ; DNB. 

41. Autobiography. 

42. See R. E. McCalmont, Memoirs of the Binghams, pp. 158, 159, 166, 167, and 
Appendix. 

43. Evelyn, Diary, April 25, 1659. 

44. Autobiography. 

45. F. B. Tupper, The Chronicles of Castle Cornet, and History of Guernsey. 


BBY Ser t 
fo MER Facet, 





%. 





GREAT TORRINGTON CHURCH, DEVONSHIRE 


7 
% 





ENGLAND, IRELAND, GUERNSEY 65 


records proudly that he “caused considerable external Reforma- 
tion in this particular.” 

Guernsey, with its French traditions, its peculiar customs, and 
its foreign flavor, offered much to an English traveller and 
student. Moreover, various godless rites, the people’s tendency 
to celebrate festivals outlawed by the Puritan canon, and the 
island’s distinction as a favorite playground of the Devil, of 
witches, and other infernal messengers, made it a peculiarly fruit- 
ful field for the labors of a divine more concerned with Biblical 
command than folklore, and much less interested in popular 
gaiety than in universal churchgoing.47 But Mather’s restlessness 
was still unsatisfied. His brother Nathaniel once again found a 
place for him, at Sandwich, but once again he rejected it. For a 
time he considered going back to Dublin, but from Samuel Mather 
there came a discouraging picture of the changes there. F inally, 
a congregational church in Gloucester, inspired by its minister, 
James Forbes, called him to the ancient church of St. Mary-de- 
Lode, in that town, and this offer won him over.4® He was not 
easily contented — Ireland, Torrington, and Guernsey had each 
proved less attractive than the trial of new fields, and on Decem- 
ber 18 he sailed once more for England.‘ 

At Gloucester he lived with Forbes, who was a Scotsman, and, 
of course, a nonconformist, preaching during these years in 
Gloucester Cathedral, “with great success, but to the apparent 
_ danger of shortening his life.”5° Mather delivered his morning 
sermons in St. Mary’s Church, just outside the Cathedral gate, 
in the square where Bishop Hooper was burned for his resistance 
to popery.* Inside the building was the tomb lovingly declared 
by an unsceptical age to be that of Lucius, the first Christian 
king of Britain. It was hallowed ground for an antiquarian and 
an admirer of martyrs, and the Cathedral itself, where Mather 
held forth in the afternoons,’ had even more of the spell of an 

46. Autobiography; Parentator, p.19. In Mather’s time the Castle was not con- 
nected with the mainland. 

47. See the histories of Guernsey, and especially E. MacCulloch, Guernsey Folklore. 
Cf., of course, Hugo’s Les Travailleurs de la Mer. 

48. Autobiography; MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 550, 551. 

49. MS. Diary in American Antiquarian Society library, labelled “ 1660,” contains 
some pages referring to this Journey; Autobiography. 

50. Nonconformist’s Memorial, ii, 249, 250. 

51. Autobiography; Parentator, p. 20. For St. Mary’s Church, see T. D. Fosbrooke, 
An Original History, pp. 341ff. For Hooper, see Jdid., pp. 185, 186. 

52. Lbid., p. 341; Autobiography. 

53. Lbid. 


66 INCREASE MATHER 


historic past. The beauty of the “noble fabric” s4 may have been 
decried as vanity of the flesh, even after its harsh correction at 
the hands of Cromwell’s too zealous vandals; but its size and 
dignity must have appealed to a young divine educated among 
the bleak meeting-houses of New England. All in all, Glouces- 
ter, that “handsome Citty, considerable for the Church & monu- 
ments,”4 had much to recommend it. Forbes was an ideal 
comrade. Frequent imprisonment and the final penalty of 
excommunication failed to swerve him from his nonconforming 
path. Such stern devotion to his faith qualified him to inspire 
a young disciple, himself not without tough fibre, and ardent in 
his first labors for his church. Mather felt that he need seek no 
further.s© Entering heartily into Forbes’s task of building up 
what was to become a permanent Congregational establishment 
in Gloucester, he declared himself content to settle there. This 
time not his own restlessness but external events drove him to 
move. 

He “saw a change of times at the door.” “But the court which 
is without the temple leave out, and measure it not: for it is 
given unto the Gentiles; and the holy city shall they tread under- 
foot forty and two months,” was the text of a sermon in which 
he prophesied “‘sufferings for the faithful.” In the face of the 
storm he turned once more to Guernsey.*? 

He left Gloucester on February 2, 1660, and travelling by way 
of Bristol, Glastonbury, and Yeovil, reached Weymouth on the 
8th. ‘There he stayed till the 16th of March, when he sailed for 
Jersey. After a fortnight in that island, he came to Guernsey, 
on April 7.58 On May 31, 1660, Charles II was proclaimed in 
“i Retersporiape? 

The event was celebrated “with ringing of bells, and feux-de- 
joie and great rejoicing; half of all the companies of Militia of 
this island, of the most expert, being under arms.” The procla- 
mation was read by Abraham Carey, the provost, in six places, 
one of which was at the church door. Messengers were sent to 
congratulate Charles. But with so much of what had made 

54. Evelyn, Diary, July 31, 1654. 

ss. Cf. T. D. Fosbrooke, 4n Original History, pp. 233ff. 

56. Autobiography. 

57. Lbid. 

58. MS. Diary, “1660.” 


59. P. LeRoy, Note-Book, p. 25. 
60. [bid., pp. 25, 26. 


AASNUAND “LANUOD ATLSVO 











ENGLAND, IRELAND, GUERNSEY 67 


England and Guernsey a promised land for him, crumbling about 
his feet, Increase Mather, amid the rejoicing in the castle and the 
streets of ‘“Petersport,” refused to drink the king’s health.™ 

If this were overlooked, he left no doubt as to his attitude by 
refusing to sign papers sent by General Monk, now Duke of 
Albermarle, to all government officers, “the purport of which 
was that now we believed the times were and would be happy.” 
“A naughty & malicious person,” said to have been a certain 
Ashton, and a chaplain at Jersey, took pains to tell Monk that | 
his failure to get signatures from Guernsey was due to Mather’s 
influence.* The duke ordered the governor, “Colonel Weaver,” 
to have the rebellious Puritan brought before him; but the 
command was disobeyed, and Mather writes of Weaver, ‘‘God 
moved his heart to stand my friend, by which means I escaped 
the trouble, which, in that matter, I had been threatened with.” ® 
More dangerous was Captain Sharp, arriving as lieutenant- 
governor, on April 24, 1660; for he returned the muster-roll 
without Mather’s name. On another list his favorite Latiniza- 
tion of Crescentius for Increase had appeared, so that it was 
declared that Increase was not an officer in Guernsey. Therefore 
he was held to be entitled to no pay. In this crisis, M. Martin, a 
deacon of the French church in Petersport, made deposition to 
such good effect that the arrears of Mather’s salary, of £120 a 
year, were paid in full.® 


With these sharp contacts with the new régime, virtually ends \/ 


Mather’s first experience away from Boston. Sir Hugh Pollard, 
the new governor of Guernsey, insisted on conformity, and 
Mather was forced to leave on March 1, 1660-61. He remarks, 
with some satisfaction, it seems, ‘Thus was I persecuted out 
of two places, Gloucester and Guernsey, before I was twenty 
two years of age.” © 

Till June he lived, now in Weymouth and now in Dorchester, 
preaching continuously, but without salary.” At Weymouth 
there had been an Independent congregation during the Com- 

61. Autobiography. 

62. Ibid.; Parentator, pp. 20, 21. 

63. Autobiography. I have not been able to find that any “Colonel Weaver” was 
ever governor of Guernsey, but LeRoy, Note-Book, p. 25, refers to ‘Generall Wayver” 
as governor. 

64. Autobiography; LeRoy, Note-Book, p. 25. 

65. Autobiography. 

66. Lbid. 

67. Ibid.; Parentator, p. 22. 


68 INCREASE MATHER 


monwealth, and such leaders for it as George Thorn, and John 
Wesley, grandfather of a famous namesake.°§ These men were 
still at work when Mather joined them, and no doubt planned 
measures to keep their flocks together even after their meetings 
were frowned on by law. Here was religious pioneering and the 
best of experience for a young divine. 

In Dorchester, a town bound by close ties to New England, 
and famous for more than one good Puritan, Mather found similar 
work to be done. William Benn, the Congregational leader, had 
been ejected by the Restoration from the Church of All Saints, 
which his congregation had usurped under the Commonwealth. 
He was now meeting the loyal members of his flock and wor- 
shipping with them in private houses, laying the foundations for 
a Congregational Church that still endures.°? Mather’s aid must 
have been welcome, and he may have recognized a special claim 
upon him in the family connection between his brother Nathaniel 
and Benn. 

Such work, however, was not the sort to hold a young man with 
his way in the world still to make. If England could give him 
nothing but a chance to work without pay toward the care of 
young and struggling churches, he might better return to Massa- 
chusetts where the first throes of religious establishment were 
safely past. The signs of the times were clear. Puritan suprem- 
acy had gone, great churches in large towns were no longer to 
be his, and a man of his cloth could hope for nothing but the 
humblest of posts. Four hundred pounds a year was offered him, 
he tells us, if he would conform, but this he “durst not do.” 7° 
He considered going to Holland to join Nathaniel, but Samuel 
Bellingham, who had once invited him to make the journey, had 
been forced to hasten his departure, and the plan came to 
nothing." It was as a last resort, it would seem, that he decided 
to revisit his birthplace. He longed to see his father, and hoped 
that he might find a place in New England “for some time.” 
This does not sound as if he contemplated more than a brief stay 
there, and when, on June 29, 1661, he sailed for home, it was not 
eagerly, but simply “with submission to the will of God.” ” 

68. Cf. J. Hutchins, The History and Antiquities of Dorset, ii, 418ff.; W. Densham 
and J. Ogle, The Story, pp. 367ff.; and Nonconformist’s Memorial, ii, 161ff., 164ff. 

69. Densham and Ogle, The Story, pp. 113ff. 

70. Autobiography; Parentator, p. 22. 

71. Autobiography; MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 6. 

72. Autobiography; Parentator, p. 23. He sailed from Weymouth. 











CHURCH OF ST, MARY DE LODE, GLOUCESTER 





ENGLAND, IRELAND, GUERNSEY 69 
His ship was bound for Newfoundland, and he landed there 


after a voyage of somewhat more than a month. With him he 
had brought many books; for the size of his library three years 
later 74 points clearly to the fact that his first experience in the 
bookshops of London had led him to buy much. Indeed, in the 
case of a few volumes, his own inscriptions show that they were 
selected during his travels. The works of William Fenner, in the 
second collected edition, for example, he bought for twenty shil- 
lings 7>— the current price of the then current doctrine of “this 
pious divine,” with his “plain, zealous, and alarming”’ style.” 
Of “‘association”’ interest are two other books. One, Samuel 
Winter’s ““Summe of diverse Sermons Preached in Dublin,” 
marked as the gift of the author’s son at Dublin in 1658,77 evi- 
dences once again the partiality of Josiah Winter for his class- 
mate. The other, the “De Bono Unitatis,” a warning to the 
English church by that doughty theologian, John Amos Comenius, 
a man of some interest to New Englanders of the day, is inscribed 
as Increase Mather’s gift to his father in 1660.78 And, finally, one 


cannot overlook a copy of Plautus among these sober neighbors.79 __/ 


One Puritan, at least, did not exclude profane works, if they were 
classic. The hint given by the buying of this book is abundantly 
borne out elsewhere in his library.*° 

Books were tangible products of his voyagings, but the ex- 
perience and impressions he had gained were of far greater sig- 
nificance, and quite as obvious in the record of his later life. The 
maelstrom of English social life before and during the Restora- 
tion floated to the surface many great figures, and Mather, tossed 
in the same whirlpool, had moored himself by several of them. 
Winter and Samuel Mather were men of ability and liberal 
minds. Howe, rigid in belief, but by the power of personality 
enabled to hold an uncoveted place near the governing force of 
England; Cromwell seen through Howe’s eyes;** Forbes, with his 
stern consistency of belief; and Colonel Bingham, a soldier, and 
practically minded politician who relished the preaching of a 

73. Parentator, p. 23. 

74. J. H. Tuttle, The Libraries of the Mathers, pp. 280-290. 

7%, See Mather’s copy, now owned by the Boston Public Library. 

76. B. Brook, Lives of the Puritans, 11, 451, 452. 

77. The book is now owned by the American Antiquarian Society. 

78. Cf. Colonial Society Publications, xxi, 181; H. Criegern, Fohann Amos Comenius 
als Theolog, p. 66; P.H. Hanus, Educational dims and Educational Values, pp. 193ft. 


79. The book is now owned by the American Antiquarian Society. 
80. Cf. pp. 76, 126, 127 post. 81. Parentator, p. 18. 


70 INCREASE MATHER 


good Puritan in his garrison church — these are all names which 
stand out in the record. Strong men, active times, Ireland, Eng- 
land, the thronging seventeenth-century London, Guernsey, quiet 
Devonshire hillsides, books, contact with thought, narrow and 
broad, Congregational and Presbyterian, all gave abundant 
material for reflection on the long voyage home. And with the 
sudden change of scene on the king’s return, he had tasted what 
he fondly believed to be unrighteous persecution, and had learned 
by experience what it is to work for one’s faith in a land where 
official sanction is withheld. Through it all he had kept un- 
scathed what, though we may see them as narrow and dusty 
tenets, were to him and his class in his age clearly flaming ideals. 
If his father had protested against the rites of the established 
church and had rejected not only the surplice, but his native 
land, in order to build anew elsewhere, so Increase, less reasonable 
in the fervency of his faith, had spurned collegiate gowns, de- 
clined the royal health, and left unsigned the Oath of Allegiance. 
His creed had stood the test before which many another’s had 
yielded, the inducement to purchase by conformity a far better 
living than any loyal Puritan could command in the new world. 
Four hundred pounds a year may have been an exceptional bait, 
to be distrusted as such; but, young as he was, he had received 
in Guernsey more than his father, with all his eminence in the 
colonies, could be given by his faithful church.* There were 
comfortable rewards for those in England who chose to read the 
Common Prayer, and, moreover, the temptation was not one to 
be measured in shillings and pence. Mather’s heart was in 
England, he had left home planning a life-work abroad, and he 
returned only as a last resort, submitting to the Lord’s will. 
Carp as we may in the twentieth century, there was, in Increase 
Mather’s adherence to a point of faith, nobility to pass current 
for all time. 

The seeds of experience had been thickly sown, and they sprang 
later to abundant growth. His desire for England waxed with his 
years. If he had left Boston a boy, he came back a man.) Like 
a man, leaving the ship which brought him from Newfoundland, 
at the first sight of his father, he “wept abundantly for joy.” 
This, he writes, was “the first, & I think the only time that I ever 
wept for joy.” 83 

82. The History of Dorchester, p. 181, notes that the £100 granted Richard Mather 


was, for the period, liberal compensation. 
83. Autobiography. 











JOHN HOWE 


From a painting in the National Portrait Gallery 





CHAPTER VIII 


BEGINNINGS IN BOSTON 
|| aac MATHER arrived at home on a Saturday evening. 


Eleazar, his brother, had just returned from Northampton, 
and the next day the two young men led the services in their 
father’s church. ‘“The Comforted Old Patriarch, sat Shining like 
the Sun in Gemini, ... hearing his two Sons, in his own Pulpit 
entertain the People of GOD, with Performances, that made all 
People Proclaim him, 4” Happy Father.” * 

This was in September, 1661, and it was not until 1664 that 
Increase Mather was formally installed at the Second Church in ». 
Boston.? The interval forms a natural stage in the tale of his life. 
It was a period of settlement, and of aspiration rather than 
achievement. There were desires forsaken in the face of neces- 
sity, and ideals pruned back by contact with actual church 
problems. Yet it was, withal, a time of great significance for his 
life. 

Boston had changed since he left it. The leading town of a 
district of perhaps thirty thousand people, its houses were “for 
the most part raised on the Sea-banks and wharfed out with 
great industry and cost, many of them standing upon piles, close 
together on each side the streets as in London, and furnished with 
many fair shops,” and “their materials’ were “Brick, Stone, 
Lime, handsomely contrived.” It had also its “Town-house 
built upon pillars where the Merchants may confer’ while “‘in 
the Chambers above they keep their monethly Courts.”’ A public 
library, too, was planned for. “Their streets are many and large, 
paved with pebble stone, and the South-side adorned with 
Gardens and Orchards....On the North-west and North-east 
two constant Fairs are kept for daily Traffick thereunto. On the 
South there is a small, but pleasant Common where the Gallants 
a little before Sun-set walk... till the nine a clock Bell rings them 
home.” We can reconstruct the picture more accurately than 

1. Parentator, p. 23. 

2. Ibid., p. 25; Autobiography. 

3. F. B. Dexter, Estimates; J. H. Benton, The Story of the Old Boston Town House; 
J. Josselyn, 4n Account of Two Voyages, p.125; Colonial Society Publications, xii, 116f. 


Sarwan, 


v4 INCREASE MATHER 


that of earlier Boston, for here and there to-day throughout New 
England we find some broad-beamed old house that has faced 
down the changes of years since 1661. 

But, although the town was “rich and very populous, much 
frequented by strangers,” 4 to a man who had known London 
it may well have seemed stale and unprofitable. Similarly, per- 
haps, there was little enticement in invitations to minister to 
congregations in “Barnstaple,” so much less developed than the 
English town which bore its name, in Windsor, in the “Sea- 
Town” of Guilford, or in Plymouth, “the elder sister of all the 
united Colonies.” > Half a dozen other towns sought Mather’s 
services, but he turned his back quickly enough on all but the 
two largest settlements, Boston and Dorchester. Though the 
former ultimately won him, it was in the latter, in its church and 
‘his father’s old house, that he first found immediate interest in 
the colonies.° 

There lived his step-sister, Maria.7? She was the daughter of 
John Cotton, by his second wife, and her mother had married 
Richard Mather some years before. Increase Mather was thus 
brought “into acquaintance with her,” and perhaps his thoughts 
had sometimes turned back to her from England. Certainly when 
he was once at home he lost no time, for in March of the next 
year their marriage was celebrated. One would go far for a 
glimpse of their wooing; but Puritan training did not encourage 
romantic expression, and the family archives hold no written 
record of young love. That it did not exist is not to be assumed. 
Such matters, perhaps unworthy in the sight of God, were not 
readily committed to paper; and remembering this, the great 
tenderness with which Increase wrote of his wife is all the more 
striking. Her son called her a “Gentlewoman of much Goodness 
in her Temper; a Godly, an Humble, and a Praying Woman.” 
Increase Mather wrote that in her the Lord gave him “a great 
Blessing”’ for she was “Singularly Conscientious, Humble, Pious, 
Prayerful” and the “Dear Companion of”’ his “Pilgrimage on 
Earth.” To her children she was to be “a Tender Mother (if 


4. Josselyn, 4n Account, p. 125. 

5. Autobiography; Josselyn, dn Account, p. 120; E. Johnson, History, p. 98. 

6. Autobiography; S. J. Barrows and W. B. Trask, Records, p. 22. 

gE Ge oh 

8. March 6, 1661-62. Autobiography, and entry in Increase Mather’s Bible, owned 
by the Massachusetts Historical Society. 

9. Parentator, p. 24. 


BEGINNINGS IN BOSTON 73 


there was such an one in the world),” and at her death, more than 
fifty years later, her husband wrote with more than a hint of deep 
feeling of his “Dear, Dead Consort.” *° She had been “‘of a very 
loving, tender disposition.” “I kept close to my study,” he 
writes, ““& committed the management of the affairs of the family 
to her. When I have been absent from my family, I was easy in 
my spirit because my heart did safely trust in her, who did me 
good, & not evil, all the days of my life. She was always very 
careful not to do anything which she thought would trouble me. 
Her honor to me was too great, for she has said to many that she 
thought I was the best husband, & the best man in the whole 


world.” ** Her heart, hemmed in by Puritan restraint, disciplined 


by the responsibilities of managing a household in colonial Boston, 
clearly was warm with love for her husband. His simple phrasing 
shows, as plainly as any emotional outburst of a romantic era, 
the tenderness of age born of the love of his youth. 

On the morning of the twelfth of the following February there 
was born to Maria and Increase Mather a son, and three days 
later he was baptized by Mr. Wilson “at ye old church in Bos- 
ton.” * The name of Cotton was given him in honor of his 
mother’s father, and the pitch of fame to which he carried it needs 
no comment here.’? Increase Mather loved all his children dearly. 
To them he wrote: “[you] are all of you so many parts of myself 
and dearer to me than all things which I enjoy in this world”’; 
and his firstborn became singularly precious to him. Cotton’s 


relation to his father was to be at once that of disciple, companion, 


and champion, and from the days when he lay in his cradle in his 
first winter, many hopes clustered about his head. 

He was born in Boston, in the house which had been the home 
of his grandfather Cotton and the birthplace of his mother. Its 
broad rooftree sheltered Increase Mather and his wife for the 
first eight years of their married lifes It stood very near the 
present Pemberton Square, and seems to have been a double 
house. One half was once occupied by Sir Henry Vane, and the 
northern half by John Cotton. Possibly the Mathers had all of 


10. I. Mather, 4 Sermon Concerning Obedience & Resignation to the Will of God, 
Pp- 1, 38-40. 

11. Autobiography. 

12. Entry in Increase Mather’s Bible (see note 8). 

13. Autobiography; B. Wendell, Cotton Mather. 

14. Letter prefacing Autobiography. 

15. Entry in Increase Mather’s Bible (see note 8); MHS Proc., xviii, 14. 

16. Cf. MHS Coll., Series 5, v, note on pp. 59-62. 


~ 
ae 
&, 


74. INCREASE MATHER 


it. In any case, the northern part was theirs. Nothing remains 
of the old house, but it seems to have been “‘an old square house 
of the usual pattern,” 7 and from an occasional one of its con- 
temporaries still preserved we may guess at its character. Dig- 
nity, sturdiness, and simplicity of design, and the sound effect of 
fine proportions, mark the seventeenth-century builder’s work 
in America. 

We generalize blindly to-day as to the Puritans’ contempt for 
art, and, in the same breath, acknowledge the broadly satis- 
factory nature of their handiwork. We find beauty in their 
furniture, plain and rugged always, but never without the quality 
that comes from strength and balance in design,"® and at the 
same time deny to its makers any interest in beauty. True, they 
planned for use, not ornament, but they had an eye for dignity 
and proportion, and builded better than they knew. So when 
they wrote, save for an occasional lapse into forced decoration 
of style, just as some bits of their furniture show here and there 
too much elaboration,'® they wrote to instruct, to guide, or to 
warn, but gave worth to their pages by a sincere purpose dignified 
by a plain and vigorous form. Conscious artists in architecture 
or literature they may not have been, but unconsciously they 
observed traditional standards of beauty of line and power of 
phrase. 

“Accordingly, when we follow Increase Mather inside his new 
home, we shall find antidotes for many a misconception of to-day. 
The Puritan’s fireside is austere to us, because he wrote and talked 
about austere things; but it was not alone in the Mather house 
that love of wife and children brought warmth. In the back of 
our minds we think of early New Englanders as ascetics, as men 
blind to beauty, and concerned only with repression and dis- 
cipline. Yet within their doors there were chests of drawers, 
chairs, or tables, beautiful in themselves. On their tables were 
bits of pottery admired to-day. In their kitchens was pewter, 
for use and not for show, that we are glad to display upon our 
shelves.?? They did not shun good things of the table, nor were 


17. MHS Coll., Series 5, v, pp. 59, 60, 62, 63. 

18. Cf., for example, W. Nutting, Furniture of the Pilgrim Century. 

19. [bid., passim. 

20. Cf. Ibid.; MHS Coll., Series 5, vols. v, vi (Sewall’s Diary), Series 6, vol. 1, 
especially p.4n.; I. W. Lyon, The Colonial Furniture of New England, pp. 219ff. and 


its references to Puritan inventories. 


BEGINNINGS IN BOSTON 75 


they deprived of them. They drank good beer and wine;”t and, 
if Puritanism be blamed for its attempt to control the smallest 
daily acts of its followers,” their tankards and wineglasses brim- 
ming on their tables point a moral to him who believes that the 
twentieth century has left Puritan narrowness dead and far 
behind. 

Yet from Increase Mather’s point of view the crowning glory 
of the house was not in the furniture, not in the “pendulum 
clock”’ that ticked on the wall beside the great fireplace, nor in 
the silver tankard that shone on the pine table, but in the books. 
that lined his study’s shelves.*? “‘I have ever since any of you | 
can remember,” he told his children, “loved to be in no place on — 
the Earth, so much as in my Study.” * Any student of his day — 
would have found resource there, and any book-collector cause 
for pride. On October 18, 1664, he entered in his diary, “Wrote 
catalogue of my books,” and the list is fortunately extant.’ 
It contains nearly seven hundred titles, and represents nearly a 
thousand volumes. There were sturdy quartos with bindings then 
undulled by time, neat octavos, and a mass of smaller books and / 
pamphlets to fill the narrower spaces. To-day items for the an- 
tiquarian and bibliophile, the bulk of his library was then the 
current output of the press. There was room, of course, for the 
sixteenth century, with its Renaissance educators and its church 
reformers, and they held proud posts. 

A man’s books give the key to his character and tastes.” 
To follow around Mather’s shelves is to see him more clearly. 
He was a professional divine, and by far the greater part of his 
collection was made up of Biblical commentaries, treatises, and 
sermons. The Latin church fathers rubbed elbows with seven- 
teenth-century English Puritans. Historians occupied a good- 
sized row, and treatises on geography and books of travel point 
to interests broader than those concerned with his daily task. Of 
peculiar fascination is a group of books on science, or what passed ~ 
for science in his time. Here is Lazare Riviére’s ?7 “Practise of 


21. E. Johnson, History, pp. 246, 247; W. Wood, New Englands Prospect, p. 15. 
22. Cf. J. T. Adams, The Founding, p. 79. 
23. The clock and tankard are referred to in his will. See C. Robbins, History, pp. 


24. I. Mather, Sermon Concerning Obedience &8 Resignation, p. i. 

25. MS. Diary, “1660”; J. H. Tuttle, The Libraries of the Mathers, pp. 280-290. 
26. For Mather’s books, discussed below, cf. [did. 

27. A French physician, 1589-16565. 


76 INCREASE MATHER 


Physick,” a book with the illuminating title of “The Causes of 
Pestilence,” an up-to-date medical treatise by Dr. Thomas 
Willis? then alive and practising in England, a “Body of 
Chymistry,” the “Physica” of another contemporary, Jean 
Magirius,?? Scribonius %° in a sixteenth-century edition, Thomas 
Cogan’s “Haven of Health,” and, more familiar to our ears, the 
“De Augmentis Scientiarum” of Bacon, and his ‘Natural 
History.” Euclid appears, with a commentary, and Ramus, as 
we should expect, is represented by more than one volume. 
/ Finally, the classics make a brave showing. Tacitus, Juvenal, 
/ Persius, Cicero, Demosthenes, Horace, Plautus, Seneca, A‘sop, 
Lucian, Sophocles, Lucan, and Ovid’s “Art of Love,” shelved 
with the works of Charles Chauncy, John Davenport, John 
Cotton, and other New England authors, reveal two sides of Mas- 
sachusetts Puritanism, and correct the fatally easy generalization 
which asserts that men of Mather’s type, because they wrote and 
read along the line of their beliefs, were blind to all else and 
ignorant of the great profane literature of the world. 

Abandoning classification, and tumbling out on the table 
a heap of books, chosen at random for their connection with 
elements in Mather’s life, or for their appeal to our modern eyes, 
one may have a composite impression which will serve in lieu 
of a detailed bibliographical study of Mather’s library list. In 
such a heap would be “The Theatre of God’s Judgements,” a 
collection of tales ‘“‘from Sacred, Ecclesiastical, and Prophane 
Authors” showing God’s punishment of transgressors of His 
laws, written by the schoolmaster of Oliver Cromwell.3* Beside 
it is “The World of Wonders” by H. Stevens, hiding under its 
English title a translation of Henri Estienne’s famous “Apologie 
pour Herodote.” # Here are literary kinsmen of what was to be 
the most famous of Increase Mather’s own works.%3 Robert 
Fabyan’s * chronicle of England from the arrival of Brutus to the 
sixteenth century, known in his day as “The Concordance of 
Histories,” lies open before us. The “Adagia” of Erasmus is 
better known to-day, as is, perhaps, Buchanan’s great Scottish 

28. Cf. DNB. 29. 1615-1697. 

30. Roman physican of the first century. 

31. See DNB, article “Thomas Beard.” 

32. Cf., for example, C. H. C. Wright, History of French Literature, p. 205. 

33. See pages 170-171 post. 

34. Cf. DNB. 

35. Cf. H. O. Taylor, Thought and Expression in the Sixteenth Century, i, 166. 


BEGINNINGS IN BOSTON 77 


history.*° Of the Puritans, Owen, Mede, and Baxter 37 are seen 
at once, and William Prynne’s great tirade against the theatre, 
the “ Histrio-Masttx,’’* called by Voltaire “a very bad book,” 39 
but which is, none the less, a “magnum opus of Puritan enthu- 
siasm and learning.’’4° Here and there a book has an inscrip- 
tion marking it as the gift of Richard Mather, and five of his 
works were in his son’s hands. Milton’s “ Apology for Smectym- 
nuus” and his “Defensio pro Populo Anglicano”’ catch one’s eye, 
and a collector of Americana would delight in “The Planter’s 
Plea,” the ‘“Anti-Synodalia,” and kindred works. Calvin’s im- 
mortal “Institutes” 4ishere, of course, and, lest we form too nar- 
row an idea of the tastes of the collector, the works of Robert 
Bellarmine, a cardinal so derided by the Dutch Puritans as to 
have a wine jug modelled in his likeness and crowned by them 
with his name. Fuller’s “Church History” is familiar, “Hall 
against Long Hair” has an alluring title,“ and “Willet and Hol- 
land de vocal Judgment of witches’’ 4 is an entry which arouses 
our curiosity when we keep later events in mind. 

In a far different field is Grotius on the power of the temporal 
government in church councils; and Sir Walter Raleigh’s 
politically advanced “Prerogative of Parliaments,” 4’ and a mass 
of pamphlets on current political topics, reveal the interest of at 
least one ecclesiastic in the policies and problems of the state. 
One cannot turn away without a glance at the numerous com- 
pilations or collections, books of ready reference, flanked by 
grammars and dictionaries of various languages. There is the 
“Herwologia Anglica” of Henry Holland,‘* the “Anglorum 


36. Cf. Cambridge History of English Literature, iti, 164. 
a7. CL DNB. 
38. DNB; Cambridge History of English Literature, vi, 403, 406; A. W. Ward, 
History of English Dramatic Literature, NeAiat. 
39. In his Sur la Consideration qu’on doit aux Gens de Lettres. 
40. A. W. Ward, History of English Dramatic Literature, ii, 412f. An entry in the 
as 1660” MS. Diary shows that Mather was reading the Histrio-Mastix on Dec. 13, 1664. 
41. H.O. Taylor, Thought and Expression, i, 402-423. 
42. Cf. R. Chambers, The Book of Days, 1, 371, 372. 
43. For Thomas Fuller, see DNB. 
44. Thomas Hall, 1610-1665. See DNB. 
45. I have not identified this book positively, but see Cambridge History of English 
Literature, 1Vv, 325. 
46. De Imperio Summarum Potestatum Circa Sacra. Cf. J.L. de Burigny, The Life 
of ... Grotius, pp. 85, 365. 
47. Cambridge History of English Literature, iv, 64. 
48. I thus identify Mather’s entry “Herologia Anglorium.” Holland’s book, con- 
taining brief lives of famous men, appeared in 1620. 


78 INCREASE MATHER 


Prelia”’ so much in favor with Elizabeth’s Privy Council,4? and 
Matthias Prideaux’s “Introduction to the Reading of History.” s° 
Its pages shed light on the critical views of the time. It sums 
up, with the assurance of a Wells, the earth’s history to the 
accession of Charles I, classifies history, asks engaging ques- 
tions to stimulate the student, and delivers itself of harsh 
opinions on the profane romances or “bastard histories” of an 
earlier day.* What wonder that the tales of Arthur do not 
find their way to this Boston house, or that there are lacking the 
lighter works of the Elizabethan “merrie England”? Yet, save 
for this absence of fiction, of poetry, of current English literature, 
redeemed only by such items as Fuller’s “Worthies”’ or “Her- 
bert’s poems,” it is hard from a seventeenth-century vantage- 
point to pick flaws in the Mather library as a collection for a man 
broad in culture and active in mind. 

One would turn gladly enough from the books, to catch a 
_ glimpse of their owner in the flesh. “It was Commonly said, J¢ 
was avery Edifying Thing, only to see him in our Public Assemblies; 
His very Countenance carried the Force of a Sermon with it.” 
_No portrait of him at this time is preserved, but we may believe 
that his stature, his strongly modelled face with its high cheek- 
bones and long, straight nose, and, most characteristic of all, his 
long narrow hands with their slender fingers, were distinctive 
features then as well as twenty years later.*3 Fortunately, if we 
lack evidence as to externals, we do find hints here and there of 
more fundamental elements in his make-up. It was during these 
years that he wrote the first of the diaries preserved for us. In 
them there are, here and there, vivid sidelights on the writer. 
We see in his “heart serious” or “heart various”’ “4 at the close 
of each day’s entry his effort to appraise his progress in his task 
of walking with his will in strict accordance with God’s. In his 
constant debates as to whether he should accept the call of the 
Second Church in Boston, his worries about salary,'* his longing 
to move elsewhere, and, by preference, to England,37 there is 

49. Cf. A. C. Potter, Catalogue, p. 193. 

50. See DNB, article “John Prideaux, 1578-1650.” 

51. M. Prideaux, 4n Easy and Compendious Introduction for Reading all sorts of 
Histories, pp. 348, 349. 52. Parentator, p. 40. 

53. See the 1688 Portrait of Mather, reproduced as frontispiece to this book. 

54. MS. Diary, “1660”; Parentator, p. 40. 

$5. Autobiography; MS. Diary, “1660,” entries Feb. 15, March 15, 1664. Cf. also, 


C. Robbins, History, PD. 152. 
56. MS. Diary, “1660,” entry Feb. 17, 1664. 57. Autobiography. 


BEGINNINGS IN BOSTON 79 


seen the working of his remembered successes abroad, and the 
desire for the home country that ran in his blood. And a still 
more human side appears in his visits to his neighbors, his dinings 
out, his many callers, and the repeated occurrence in his diary of 
the great names of his Boston — Wilson, Allen, Richards, Way, 
Collicott, Mayo, Clark, Higginson, and Hutchinson.** He is thus 
revealed, not as the dour minister locked in his study, or the 
ascetic shunning the world, but as the man of “very Gentlemanly 
Behaviour; fall of Gravity, with all the Handsom Carriage, as well 
as Neatness, of a Gentleman.” 5°.He was welcomed by clergy and 
laymen, sought for as a preacher, and known as a travelled and 
learned man and a cultured friend. He did not waste his words, 
but he loved “good talk.” ° If its charms lured him from work, 
what he lost in erudition he gained in a knowledge of men that 
stood him ever in good stead. Young as he was, his potentialities 
marked him early as a prominent figure in Boston streets.™ 

Such a man surely discussed with his friends the complaints 
against Massachusetts, brought before Charles II, the sending of 
John Norton and Simon Bradstreet as agents of the colony in 
England, the aftermath of the Quaker disturbances, and the 
King’s demand that the restriction of the franchise on religious 
grounds be abolished. Probably he sympathized with the tem- 
porizing policy which delayed action on this royal order so fatally 
aimed at the roots of Congregational control in New England.” 
We may be sure that he read and rejoiced in Michael Wiggles- 
worth’s “Day of Doom,” so popular in its day, and so thorough- 
going in its Calvinism. Dryden and Cowley were certainly of 
less moment to Mather than this poet of New England soil. 
But nothing in current literature or current politics concerned 
him quite so closely as the great controversy which, culminating 
in these years, divided the church and enlisted the best writers on 
each side. It was a dispute which touched every resident of the 
colony. 

58. MS. Diary, “1660,” passim. 59. Parentator, p. 186. 

60. Ibid., pp. 39, 40, 186. 

61. Parentator, p. 24, tells us that he preached alternately in Boston and Dorchester 
during the first winter after his return. Then he seems (4utobiography) to have stayed 
at the Second Church, Boston. He left the Dorchester church formally in 1663 
(Barrows and Trask, Records, pp. 22,41). He was admitted to the Boston church March 
Io, 1664. C. Robbins, History, p. 263. 

62. Cf. Palfrey, 11, chaps. 12, 13. 


63. See R. F. Roden, The Cambridge Press, pp. 95-100; M. C. Tyler, History of 
American Literature, ii, 27-35. 


SO INCREASE MATHER 


Simply stated, the problem was one of admission to the church. 
_ The original-Congregational rule was that, to be admitted into 
~ full rights as a church member, an applicant must show evidence 
of a demonstrable religious experience and a valid regeneration of 
spirit. The first settlers were, like Richard Mather, men to whom 
Congregationalism was the core of life. They found no difficulty 
in experiencing intense spiritual conviction, and in kindling in 
their hearts a faith proof against the terrors of the sea. But their 
sons, in a time and place where their religion was established and 
could be seen more as a matter of course, had no such opportuni- 
ties for inward victories of soul. Were they, therefore, although 
baptized in infancy, to be denied admission to the church? 
According to strict Congregational law they must be excluded; 
but, if they were, who was to carry on the living religious 
organization? % 

The question was discussed at a meeting of ministers in 1657, 
and simmered until 1662, when the General Court, percetving 
the danger which lay in indecision on a point so fundamental to 
the whole colonial structure, summoned a Synod to solve the 
problem. Increase Mather was interested in the ministers’ first 
debate, and in England he helped his brother publish their 
results. It was natural, therefore, that when the church council 
of 1662 was formed from delegates and ministers of the various 
churches, he was chosen to accompany his father in representing 
Dorchester.” 

The heated arguments, the volleying of texts in support of one 
_ position or another, and the various doctrines upheld, concern 
us less than the result of the Synod, printed in 1662.°7 This 
declared, in brief, that a man of sober and virtuous life, even 
though not fired by any verifiable religious experience, might 
claim membership in the church, provided he had been baptized 
in youth, but could not be admitted to communion. His children 
were entitled to baptism, but not to partake of the Lord’s Supper. 
This made at once two classes of church membership, communi- 
cants and non-communicants. This dualism, the presence of 
rights conferred by inheritance beside those due to men of 


64. On the controversy which followed, see W. Walker, Creeds and Platforms, pp. 
238, 339, and H. M. Dexter, Congregationalism, pp. 467. 

65. Walker, Creeds and Platforms, p. 261, n. 5. 

66. Barrows and Trask, Records, p. 39. 

67. Walker, Creeds and Platforms, pp. 301ff., 238. 


BEGINNINGS IN BOSTON SI 


authentic religious experience, held possibilities of complications 
of many sorts. 

By far the majority of the Synod ® voted for the plan outlined 
above, but there was an active minority. With it sided Increase 
Mather and his brother,®? inspired from afar by John Davenport 
of New Haven,’ and led in the council itself by President 
Chauncy. They opposed not only most of the influential divines 
of the day, but especially Jonathan Mitchell,7 the beloved tutor 
of college days, and their own father. 

Chauncy printed a protest against the decision of the Synod.” 


John Davenport followed suit. With his own essay he included 


a preface, the first published work of Increase Mather. The 


book was promptly answered by Richard Mather and Mitchell, | 


the former turning his arguments against Davenport, and the 
latter combatting the views of his erstwhile pupil.* One may read 
in the “Magnalia” the main contentions that Increase urged,’ 
and his Preface repays study from more than one aspect. 

He begins with an apology for his work, and a frank avowal of 
his respect for his opponents. The cause of truth demands, how- 
ever, that Davenport’s voice be heard. He defends the minority 
opinion briefly but adequately against such charges as that its 


VA 


upholders were few; that they denied the need for the church’s — 


care of children; and that they argued from mere weakness and 
wilfulness. There are then propounded the seven arguments 
summarized in the “Magnalia.” The seventh seems the key to 


68. H. M. Dexter, Congregationalism, p. 471. 

69. Hutchinson, History, i, 224 n. 

jo. MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 188, 189; F. B. Dexter, Sketch of the Life and Writings 
of Fohn Davenport. 

71. Cf. H. M. Dexter, Congregationalism, p. 472. 

72. His Anti-Synodalia Scripta Americana, 1662. 

73- The full title is: “nother Essay for Investigation of the Truth, In Answer to two 
Questions, Concerning 


I, The Subject of Baptism. 
II. The Consosiation of Churches. 


By John Davenport, etc.... Cambridge, Printed by Samuel Green and Marmaduke 
Johnson, 1663.” The copy in the New York Public Library bears on the title-page the 
inscription “John Cotton his booke given him by his Brother, Mt Increase Mather”; 
and at the beginning of the “Apologetical Preface to the Reader” there is written, 
apparently in the same hand, “Written by the Reverend Increase Mather.” The 
authorship is ascribed to Increase Mather in Parentator, p. 52. 

74. 4 Defense of the Answer and Arguments of the Synod met at Boston in the year 
1662, Cambridge, 1664. A summary of the answer is in C. Mather, Magnalia, book v, 
Part iii. 


75. Lbid. 


82 INCREASE MATHER 


the position taken by the rebels against the Synod. “There is 
danger of great Corruption and Pollution creeping into the 
Churches, by the Enlargement of Baptism.” There spoke the 
desire to defend the integrity of the church. 

Most interesting to us is the Preface’s moderate tone, and 
the judicial statement of its doctrine. There is no trace of the 
scurrilous pamphleteer or hot-headed fanatic. We see, rather, an 
argument for the cherished belief of a scholar who could use a 
line from Seneca, or lean on support afforded by an array of 
shes from church writers from Augustine to Cotton. Their 
ie and variety prove the work to be that of a man who 
could use the books he owned. His reading had kept pace easily 
with any deniands likely to be put upon it by Synodical debates. 
From the point of view of style there is, perhaps, nothing to 
detain us. There is, however, clear phrasing, logical arrangement, 
and skilful use of persuasive methods in controversy. And on 
every page there is the seal set upon the written word by the 
style of the English Bible. Its translators found their native 
tongue a medium capable of stateliness without loss of pictur- 
esqueness and charm. Many a good Puritan, consciously or not, 
let their habits of phrasing guide his pen. So also Mather, at 
work on his Preface, saw the power of their means. Thence came 
the resonant effectiveness of his Preface’s last words: ““Now the 
Lord grant, that his People may have one heart and one way (and 
that it may be the right way, even the way which is called Holy) 
to serve him, for the good of them, and of their Children after 
them. And the God of Truth and Peace, lead us by his Spirit into 
all Truth, through him who is made unto us of God, the Way, and 
| the Truth, and the Life.” ” 

Courage was needed to push Davenport’s book and Mather’s 
Preface toward publication. It could only be done against what 
were, for a young and untried minister, great odds. Increase did 
not flinch. To Davenport he wrote: “I have your writings still 
in my hands. I offered the Syfod to read them, but N"U.27.U 
[Mr. Norton] advised them not to suffer me.” How Norton’s 
temper must have blazed at these signs of unruliness in his pupil! 
Mather continues: “I let them have a coppy of them, which was 
genlly transcribed.” Some of the court would gladly have ruled 
out the arguments, “but the major pte were not soe violent.” It — 
was moved that the essay be printed. “All the answer that could 


/ 


76. Preface, p. 14. 


cerning 








TITLE-PAGE OF DAVENPORT’S “ANOTHER ESSAY” 





BEGINNINGS IN BOSTON 83 


be obtained was that wee might doe as we would, but they would 
not vote for such a thing, & wee must count it a favour that wee 


were not Cofianded to be silent. ... yow may see which way | 


things are like to be Carried.” 77 

In Mather’s view in the Synod one sees the strict Congrega- 
tionalism in which he had been trained asserting itself, backed 
by the same rigidity of character that marked his nonconformity.. 
in the face of opposition abroad. To him the “Half-Way Cove- 
nant,” as the Synod’s decision came to be called, meant a lowering 
of the standard of church membership. Nineteenth-century 
theologians could see how, in the movement he opposed, the 
decline of Congregationalism was begun, and the seeds of New 
England Unitarianism were sown.7® If they were right, then 
Increase Mather at twenty-three fought for the purity of the 
church to which he had dedicated his life. ; 

His position was sound in theory, but in practice there were 
difficulties, inevitable and grave. Mitchell showed that, if the 
old rule of admission to the church was maintained, there must 
be a relaxation in the test of religious experience. Otherwise 
there could be found no new members through whom the church 
might live. And, standards once lowered, religiously untested 
persons might come, in time, not merely into rights of baptism, 
but to the communion table itself. Practically he had weight on 
his side. In opposing him, Mather had none the less founded his 
belief on the rock that underlay his church. 

Increase Mather’s boldness won both friends and enemies. A 
year later someone at table declared that he “had acted dis- 
orderly in opposing ye Synod, and that being disorderly was 
as bad as drunkenesse or scandale.” 79 His father’s lack of 
sympathy with his opinion was no light thing, though their 
relations stood the test unscathed.*° In Boston, however, he won 
praise as well as blame. His views were those of Mr. Mayo, 
minister of the Second Church, who urged him to share his 
pulpit.* 

The appeal came to a man much perplexed as to his future 
course. Mather had debated with himself, sought advice from 

77. MAS Coll., Series 4, viii, 205, 206. 

78. H. M. Dexter, ““Two Hundred Years Ago in New England,” in Congregational 
Quarterly, iv, 29. 

79. MS. Diary, “1660,” entry for June 21, 1664. 


80. Parentator, p. 52. 
81. W. Walker, Creeds and Platforms, p. 266. Cf. also, MHS Coll., Series 4, vill, 78. 


84 INCREASE MATHER 


friends, and still had not decided where to take up his work.” 
His desire for England was stifled finally, no doubt, by the firm- 
ness with which the Restoration government set its face against 
nonconformity; but there were still vexations of spirit as to the 
salary he might hope for from the Boston church. It was not 
until May 24, 1664, after prayers and a public day of fasting, 
that his scruples were put to rest. On that day he was formally 
installed as Teacher of the Second Church in Boston, and received 
his charge from the hands of his aged father.® 
A look ahead reveals much. By 1668 Increase Mather had 
abandoned his strict doctrine on baptism,* and in 1675 he pub- 
lished two books in support of the ““Half-Way Covenant.” So, 
too, his intolerance, great enough to be noted by his son, who 
is himself mocked to-day as the very symbol of inflexibly rigid 
views, yielded before the tolerant adaptation of his ideas to 
practical necessity that marks his later years.*s In his autobiog- 
raphy he is silent as to his first writing and his arguments in the 
Synod, but we need not be ashamed for them. His youthful 
theories were sound in principle. In changing them he revealed 
the practical strain that guided him everywhere in his career 
and made possible for him achievement, not in the sphere of the 
abstract but in the world of men. If, before 1664, he was a 
theorist, with a narrowness that came from lack of experience in 
the daily conduct of a parish in a rapidly growing community, his 
more hard-headed traits triumphed in the end. If only by the 
“Half-Way” method could the church reach men, what mattered 
points of theory? His was an ideal of service, and service, he 
came quickly to know, could be achieved by no rule so strict 
as to exclude those whom, by milder measures, it might hope 
to win. So also one need not blink the fact that he regarded a 
sufficient salary, a house, and proper respect, as imperative needs. 
So they were, unless he were to be an impractical idealist, crying 
in a wilderness. To work among men he must be able to hold the 
place that a minister’s authority logically demanded, and on 
which it depended, in part, for its strength. He must be learned, 
if he were to teach, and books were not to be bought for love, 
, Practical policy replaced theoretical strictness; ideas gave way in 


82. Autobiography; MS. Diary, “1660.” 
83. Autobiography; Parentator, p. 25. 
84. Ibid., p. 53. 

85. Ibid., Article 13. 


BEGINNINGS IN BOSTON 85 


favor of working methods of service. He turned from an ideal of 
ascetic holiness, such as a mendicant friar may have had some- 
times, to a clearly visioned and deftly executed purpose to con- 
quer, not in philosophical discussion in some unearthly realm, 
but in the heart of the man in the seventeenth-century Boston 
street. That he changed his doctrine on baptism, or that he grew 
more tolerant, shows not weakness but strength — the courage 
to leave a chill pinnacle of thought to play his part among men 
of flesh and blood, in quest of the preéminent ideal of practical 
human service to God. 


CHAPTER IX 


THE TEACHER OF THE SECOND CHURCH 


ATHER became Teacher of the Second Church harassed 
by doubts and hedged in by terms. “Under my hand I 
expressed, that, if hereafter the Lord should call me to greater 
service elsewhere, or, in case of personal persecutions wherein not 
they but I shall be aimed at, or want of health, or if I should find 
that a competent maintenance for me and mine should not be 
afforded, then (my relation to them notwithstanding) I would be 
at liberty to return to England, or to remove elsewhere.’”’* Yet 
for fifty-nine years he served the Second Church and gave it the 
central place in his thoughts. 

Until 1674 his course was outwardly uneventful, but this period 
is, for the biographer, doubly precious. Then began the self- 
expression that gives us the truest measure of his life. Diaries, 
sermons, and printed books give us now a chance to see the man 
apart from the turmoil of the busier days to come. And, from the 
point of view of character, his inner life from 1664 to 1674 has a 
dramatic quality of its own. 

He cannot be seen, of course, apart from the affairs of the day. 
No one lived then in Boston without knowing of events abroad. 
In England there was war with the Dutch, and their guns echoed 
in the Thames. There was the smoke and glare of the Great Fire 
of London, the political stir of the fall of Clarendon, the form- 
ing of the Triple Alliance, the Declaration of Indulgence and 
its withdrawal, and the relief which came with peace with the 
persistent Dutch. Ever present was the aspiration of the new 
government toward a firmer imperial control, and its inevitable 
consequences for the colonies.?, Meanwhile there were Dryden’s 
plays, Robert Boyle’s scientific questings, John Bunyan’s soul 
searchings, and, above them all, “Paradise Lost,” “Paradise 
Regained,” and “Samson Agonistes.” 

Against this English scene, New England shone in duller lights. 
There was no dramatist in the colonies, for which good Puritans 
thanked their God; but there was no Milton. There was no 


1. C. Robbins, History, p. 21. 2. Cf. J.T. Adams, The Founding, chap. 13. 


THE TEACHER OF THE SECOND CHURCH 87 


Clarendon, but there was an Endicott, however bigoted, and a 
Bellingham, to resist the efforts of the Royal Commissioners to 
bring the American colonies of Charles II’s empire more closely 
under control. In the controversy between the king’s represen- 
tatives and the colonial leaders, appears the basic problem of the 
day. If Colonel Richard Nicolls, Sir Robert Carr, Colonel George 
Cartwright, and Samuel Maverick’ accomplished nothing in 
Massachusetts, it was not through weakness or lack of royal 
authority, but because they faced New Englanders imbued with 
the idea that their American home was theirs by charter, to be 
ruled in virtual independence and with constant jealousy of all 
trespass on the domain of their fathers’ faith. The leaders may 
not have spoken for the majority, and their position may have 
been legally unsound; but to a son of Richard Mather there 
seemed to be no room for dispute. And, in his shoes, in a land 
believed to be the stronghold of God’s elect, any of us might share 
his views unashamed. Such men as he were right in that they 
were following logically what they knew as the sole way of truth 
— the maintenance of a faith decreed by the word of God. So 
when the Puritans of Boston observed the letter of the King’s 
order, and ignored its spirit, by replacing the former restriction 
of the franchise to church members by a limitation identical in 
result, they saw it not as evasion but as righteous use of the 
readiest weapons in defence of their Bible state. To uphold their 
government was a greater duty than to submit to any ideal of 
tolerance. God’s behest could not be ignored to meet the plans 
of an earthly king. What wonder that, when the Royal Com- 
missioners sat in his congregation, Mather, from the pulpit, 
“lifted his heart to God!” 5 

United the Puritans may have been against royal encroach- 
ments, but harmony was sometimes lacking within the doors of 
their own churches. The Synod’s decision was not universally 
approved, and the First Church of Boston, on the death of their 
first leader, Mr. Wilson, took the occasion to oppose the “ Half- 
Way Covenant” by calling to their pulpit John Davenport, the 
staunchest foe of the new order.° There was a split in the ranks 
of the congregation, and Mather, by his opposition to the rebel- 

3. Cf. Palfrey, ii, 580, 581; J. T. Adams, The Founding, p. 330. 

4. Ibid., p. 331; Channing, ii, 69. 

5. MS. Diary, “1660,” July 24, 1664: “Being commissioners at meeting lifted my 


hrt to God.” 
6. Cf. H. A. Hill, History, chap. 1. 


88 INCREASE MATHER 


lious faction, gave prompt notice of his change from his views of 
1662. There was room for deep concern when a third church 
was formed by those of Wilson’s old congregation who disagreed 
with Davenport. Such a rift in church unity threatened the 
whole frame of things. 

There were other gloomy portents. More than one citizen must 
have been worried by the troubles that were to lead to a disastrous 
Indian war, and everyone knew that the college was in a state of 
discontent. Chauncy, until his death in 1672, carried Harvard 
safely through stormy financial seas, relieved by such timely aid 
as Portsmouth’s contribution; but his successor, Leonard Hoar, 
coming with abundant recommendations from England, faced 
graver dangers. Dissensions sprang up within the college walls, 
and an investigation by the General Court prefaced its demand 
that Hoar improve the state of things. In 1675 he resigned. 
Whatever the root of the trouble, whatever led members of the 
Corporation to give up their offices in the midst of Hoar’s régime, 
it is obvious that disputes within the college, the hope of New 
England Puritanism, struck chill to devout advocates of the New 
England way.? 

Increase Mather notes again and again the deaths, during these 
years, of the first generation of settlers, and the change in the 
people’s attitude. An interest in New England solely as a church 
state was giving place to a more worldly view. In such signs he 
saw impending woes for the colony. With troubles at home, with 
the royal and colonial governments at odds,’ it was plain that 
the times were critical. For men of his ideals there were sure to 
be shocks in store. Characteristically he expressed this in his ser- 
mons, and stoutly preached the faith of Boston’s earliest years. 

His interest in the times was, moreover, by no means academic. 
The man who had refused the king’s health at Guernsey, and had 
seen in the Restoration promise of evil days, continued to carry 
his opinions into practice. When Whalley and Goffe, condemned 
by Charles II for their share in his father’s trial, fled to New 
England and took shelter with John Davenport in New Haven, 
more than one Puritan saw in the chance to aid in their escape 
a way to oppose royal tyranny.’ Although there was a half- 


7- Quincy, i, 27-30, 31-34; C. Mather, Magnalia, book IV, part i, section 5. 

8. Channing, ii, 65; J. T. Adams, The Founding, pp. 336, 337. 

g. Lectures on Massachusetts History, pp. 321ff.; F. B. Dexter, Memoranda; MHS 
Coll., Series 4, vill, notes to pp. 122, 123; Channing, 1i, 66, 67; Palfrey, ii, 494ff. 


THE TEACHER OF THE SECOND CHURCH 89 


hearted search for the regicides, in obedience to the king’s com- 
mands, they never lacked for friends. Increase Mather stood in 
close relation to them, and for years their letters found their way 
out of the colonies in his care.t? Naturally he did not welcome the 
Royal Commissioners’ visit to Boston. 


A greater interest than this, however, he found in observing 


the progress of his own spirit. The pages of his diaries are filled 
with introspection. There are noted not only the books he read, 
the texts he preached from, and the incidents of his busy days, 
but also his temptations and his state of mind. To-day much of 
this seems to cry “cant.” Yet, read further, the diaries reveal 
no hypocrite absorbed in morbid self-analysis, but a man writing 
of what seemed most real in life, his relation to God and to God’s 
will. His notes were penned without reference to some twentieth- 
century reader, estranged from Puritanism, and prone to scent 
hypocrisy in any outspoken expression of religious feeling. He 
was writing for himself and the God he worshipped. Nothing in 
life was so important as the search for assurance of salvation 
and for signs that one was numbered among the elect." A diary 
was but the daily balancing of the account of the writer’s success 
or failure in doing God’s will. To falsify his figures would be to 
deceive himself. Where eternal life was at stake self-deception 


would have been worse than idle. A Puritan diary read in any 


other light is unintelligible. 

Mather’s diary from 1663 to 1667 is preserved.” In it, and his 
letters, we find many details as to his daily course, and hints as to 
more general and immensely significant features of his life. His 
many callers, and his frequent dinings out, continue. He reads 
widely, and writes his sermons and learns them carefully by 
heart. A certain T., or Tim, perhaps the only one of his brothers 
not avowedly a servant of the Lord, gives him pain by wickedness. 
He travels to the college across the river, and as far as Exeter, 
New Hampshire, or to Northampton by way of Lancaster and 
Hadley," the latter the hiding-place of Whalley and Goffe.*4 
He sees a rattlesnake, but “Ye Lord prevented evil by his good 

10. Lectures on Massachusetts History, p. 342. 

11, Cf. B. Wendell, Ste/ligeri, pp. 47ff. 


12. Owned by the American Antiquarian Society. It is marked “ 1660,” and referred 
to here as MS. Diary, “1660.” 


13. MS. Diary, “1660,” June 26, July 13, 1665; Aug. 9, Sept. 10 to Sept. 20, 1664; 
June 6 to 23, 1665. 
14. Lectures on Massachusetts History, pp. 342ff. 


gO INCREASE MATHER 


providence.” ** He gets up at three o’clock in the morning “to 
see ye blazing star the people spake of,” and at five, after the 
clouds have thinned, ‘“‘there appears a Comett with a long tayle 
towards the Northwest.” *® He spends the rest of the morning in 
reading about comets, and, a few days later, rises early once more 
to get a better view of the “blazing star.”*7 And, again and again, 
he adds to the record of his days reflections on the “little care” 
shown him by the church. “God help me & remove me to some 
other place that may be more for my comfort,” he writes, and 
adds later: ‘““My special silent request unto God was that he 
would remove me from Boston to some other place yet more for 
my comfort if it would be more for his glory.”"* He finds Mr. Way 
agrees with him in saying, “yt if the way of maintenance be not 
altered,” he has just cause of complaint.?® His candid interest in 
worldly details is flanked by his recognition of his ‘temptations 
to vainglory,”?° and his struggles therewith. Worst of all, he 


‘is “grievously molested with temptations to atheism,” but his 
‘experience with prayers that have been answered saves him. He 
prays constantly, and sets down his “Causes of Humiliation 
before the Lord” beside his “‘Requests to God in Jesus Christ.” 
He finds reason for humility in “the sins of his unregenerate 
state,” his “failings in every place where” he has lived, “& in 
every relation” he has sustained, as well as in “the sad divisions 
in Boston.” He bewails his “pride, passion, sloth, selfishness, 
sensuality, earthly mindedness, unbelief,” and “hypocrisy.” 
And his aspiration is summed up as “ The threefold wish of the chief 
of sinners. I wish! I wish! I wish! That I might do some special 
service for my dear God in Fesus Christ.” ** Some prayers are 
heard,” and the generosity of Sir Thomas Temple,”? who came to 
Boston after giving up the governorship of Nova Scotia, and of 
Captain Thomas Lake,” a merchant and “‘an eminently faithful 
servant of God,” who joined the Second Church in Boston in 


15. MS. Diary, “1660,” June 21, 1665. 

16. Ibid., Dec. 5, 1664. 

17. Led.) Dees 8)1664. 

18. Ibid., Feb. 24, March 22, 1664-65. 

19. Ibid., April 22, 1665. 

200 did. Oct To 100k. 

21. Autobiography. 

22. Ibid.; Parentator, p. 34. 

23. For Temple, see DNB, and C. Robbins, History, p. 281. 

24. For Lake, cf. I. Mather, The Life and Death, pp. 102-106. His daughter later 
became Mather’s second wife. 








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TWO PAGES OF ONE OF INCREASE MATHER’S DIARIES 





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THE TEACHER OF THE SECOND CHURCH gI 


1670, relieved him from his financial straits. In gratitude he lists 
“ those special mercies which I have cause forever to bless 'God 
for.” Characteristically he includes among them his early con- 
version, his education, his employment in the ministry, his 
travels, called “a great mercy... in many ways,” his books and 
manuscripts, and the casting of his lot in “the most public place 
in New England.” s 

Such gleanings define our image of this Puritan, bound heart 
and soul in his faith, but never forgetful of the world. Piety 
and zeal do not cut him of from men; the tale of his visitors and 
visits plants him firmly in the tableau of the daily human life of 
Boston. Religious feeling never blinds him to earthly needs. 
This blending of practical temper, “Yankee shrewdness” if one 
will, and devotion to things of the spirit, grows year by year, 
and the union lies behind his whole career. His faith had no 
being except in practical expression. His piety found its true 
value in its effect on other men. 

Flis contemporaries may have known the side he reveals in his 
private papers less well than we do, but their contact with his 
spoken word, and his printed works, was more direct than ours 
can ever be. To the humblest citizens of seventeenth-century 
Boston, his books dealt with affairs of the moment, and, once 
within the doors of the Second Church, the actual tones of his 
voice sounded in their ears. We are blinded in our reading by a 
spirit hostile to his, and we know of his preaching only at second- 
hand. 

“His Delivery had something Singular in it. He spoke with a 
Grave and Wise Deliberation: But on some Subjects, his Voice 
would rise for the more Emphatical Clauses, as the Discourse 
went on; and anon come on with such a Tonitruous Cogency, that 
the Hearers would be struck with an Awe, like what would be 
Produced on the Fall of Thunderbolts.” © He never read sermons, 
though he made notes which he did not use. “He wished, there 
were more Speaking, and less Reading, in our Sermons: and would. 


have had the Preacher to be more of a Speaker; even so much, \ 


that the Necessary Vigour and Address, of proper Preaching, 
might not be lost.” 77 In style “He much despised what they call 
Quaintness.... though he were such a Scholar, yet his Learn- 
ing hindred not his Condescension to the Lowest and Meanest 
Capacity: aiming to shoot not over the Hleads, but into the 


25. Autobiography. 26. Parentator, p. 216. 27. Lbid., pp. 216, 217. 


92 INCREASE MATHER 


Hearts, of the Hearers. He was very careful to be understood, and 
concealed every other Art, that he might Pursue and Practise that 
one Art of Being Intelligible....A Simple Diet, he counted the 
most Wholsom Diet.”?® He learned early the lessons later so 
vigorously taught by Joseph Glanvill, for whom “the first Rule 
and Character of Preaching” was that “it should be PLAIN.” ” 
One shares Cotton Mather’s wonder at the statement that his 
father used a style “Affected and Quaint,” *° and on the evidence 
we have, apparently unknown to the accuser," we can easily dis- 
miss the charge. Finally one finds a statement of what we have 
already discovered. “It was his perpetual endeavour therewithal 
to Preach very Scripturally.” * He believed no language could 
equal the Bible’s, and at his son’s ordination preached on the use 
of its words as the best means of securing in sermons the Divine 
spirit.3 By such means he held his congregation, swelled its 
numbers,* and led “Thousands and Thousands” to say “they 
never knew a more Compleat Preacher.” “Competent Judges”’ 
declared “He never Preached a Sermon but what was worthy of 
the Presse 

He found outlet for his abilities not only in the pulpit, but also 
through the colonial press. Changes in his family and in his 
church and personal trials dictated many pages. Insight into the 
books written in these years is most easily found through knowl- 
edge of the conditions that sur-ounded their birth. 

From 1664 to 1670 his days were divided between the church 
in Clark’s Square, or his father’s pulpit in Dorchester,*° and his 

28. Parentator, p.215. 

29. J. E. Spingarn, Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, ii, 273f., especially 277. 
Cf. also, [did., i, pp. xxxvi-xlv. 

30. J. Oldmixon, The British Empire, i, 112; Parentaior, p. 1a 

31. Oldmixon says that Increase Mather’s sermons would bear him out, if any had 
been printed (p. 112). When Oldmixon wrote, many of Increase Mather’s sermons 
had been printed, some of them in England. Oldmixon evidently criticized what he 
had not troubled to read. 

32. Parentator, p. 215. 33. Ibid., pp. 215, 216. 


34. The admissions to membership in the Second Church from 1660 through 1673, 
according to a copy of the original records now owned by the church, were: 


1660 II 1664 7 1668 I 1672 17 
1661 3 1665 fe) 1669 x 1673 17 
1662 3 1666 7 1670 13 

1663 5 1667 5 1671 No record 

Obviously in the matter of new members, the church continued to prosper with Mather’s 
coming. 


35. Parentator, p. 214. 
36. Barrows and Trask, Records, p. 59: 


THE TEACHER OF THE SECOND CHURCH 93 


own study. In the latter year, perhaps to save the time wasted 
on his walk from his door down Hanover Street, across the Mill 
Creek, and through Middle Street, past the “Red Lion Inn” 37 
to the church, he moved to “yt house we was bought of Mr. 
Anth. Chickley.” 3° It stood on what is now the westerly side 
of North Square,3® and was bought by the trustees of the 
church as one step in their renewed attention to his welfare.*° 
From here it was but a few yards across the Square to his pulpit. 
His neighbors made the district the “court end” of the town. 
At his moving he took with him not only his wife, and Cotton, 
then seven years old, but also a son, Nathaniel, born the year 
before, and two little daughters, Maria and Elizabeth, aged five 
and four.” The Lord continued his mercies in the new house,’ 
and a third daughter, Sarah, was born on November 8, 1671, and 
a son, Samuel, saw the light on August 28, 1674. Though they 
often robbed him of sleep,# Mather thanked God for his children, 
and their preservation to him.% 

Meanwhile Cotton was showing a precocity that gave promise 
of what he was to become. By 1674 he was enrolled at Harvard, 
at the age of twelve.*° His childhood was not without its anxieties 
for a devoted father, for the boy suffered from an impediment in 
his speech, and Increase Mather more than once “fasted & 
prayed before the Lord”’ because of it. One day, he writes, “I 
called”’ Cotton “& his mother into mystudy. We prayed together, 
and with many tears bewailed our sinfulness, and begged of God 
mercy in this particular, and solemnly gave the child to God upon 
our knees, begging the Lord to accept of him. I cannot but hope 
that the Lord has heard me, and will, in some comfortable 
measure remove this evil in his own time. However, whether 
God will hear me or no, I am resolved to trust in him, & so let 
him do with me & mine as seemeth [Him?] Good.” 47 


37- See Memorial History of Boston, i, 548-551. 

38. Entry in I. Mather’s Bible, at the Massachusetts Historical Society. 

39. E. G. Porter, Rambles in Old Boston, pp. 319ff. The site is marked to-day by 
the Paul Revere House, one of the seventeenth-century landmarks of Boston. 

40. [bid., p. 319. 

41. See Memorial History of Boston, i, 550, and S. A. Drake, Old Landmarks and 
Historic Personages of Boston, p. 160. 

42. Entry in Increase Mather’s Bible. 

43. “God has blessed & increased my family” (Autobiography). 

44. Cf. MS. Diary, “1660,” Aug. 28, 1666; Jan. 1, 1666-67. 

45. Autobiography. 

46. B. Wendell, Cotton Mather, pp. 35-37. 47. Autobiography. 


94 INCREASE MATHER 


The time that was left from such cares was abundantly filled 
by work at his desk. He set out to write a life of his father-in-law, 
John Cotton, but the book, if ever completed, never found its way 
into print.4® It was in 1667 that John Davenport wrote for him 
the preface to what was the second of his printed writings, and 

/ the first worthy to be called a book, Two years later the volume 
was printed, with the title ““The Mystery of Israel’s Salvation.” ” 

The subject of the treatise was the doctrine that the Jews 
would be converted and Christ would come again. Mather held 
that the thousand Apocalyptical years were still to come; that 
Christ’s return would occur before another thousand years had 
passed; that His second advent was to be preceded by the con- 
version of the Jews; and that, finally, there would be a long and 
glorious day on earth for the elect.5°” Such a book, lighting up 
vague passages of Scripture by learned interpretation, had for 
Puritans the same spell held for us by a sound explanation of a 
fundamental scientific fact directly affecting our lives. 

It is interesting to find Davenport in his preface harping upon 
the timeliness of the book. Mather’s material was so up to date, 
indeed, as to call for some apology. ‘“‘Neither let anyone be 
offended with the seeming Novelism which is in these notions,’ 
he writes, “‘...new discoveries of old truth ought not to be 
branded with the odious name of Novel opinions.” The topics he 
treated are still discussed in some quarters, but for most of us 
they have lost interest. It is none the less worth while to remem- 
ber that they were not only interesting to his contemporaries but 
had for them the charm of novelty. 

If we cannot read the book in the spirit of those who bought it 
fresh from the press, we may still find in it paragraphs worth 
noting. We find effective use of references to current affairs, to 
the Great Fire of London, to the latest comet, and to church 


48. MS. Diary, “1660,” July 28, 31, Aug. 4, Nov. 25, 1665. 

49. The title-page reads: “The Mystery of Israel’s Salvation, Explained and 
Applyed: or, A Discourse Concerning the General Conversion of the Jsraelitish 
Nation. Wherein is Shewed, 1. That the Twelve Tribes shall be saved. 2. When this ts 
to be expected. 3. Why this must be. 4. What kind of Salvation the Tribes of Israel shall 
partake of (viz.) A Glorious, Wonderful, Spiritual, Temporal Salvation. Being the 
Substance of several Sermons Preached Jy Increase Mather, M. 4. Teacher of a 
Church in Boston in New England. [Several lines of Scripture] Printed in the Year 1669.” 
There is a later title-page, in which, instead of the last line of the first one we have “Lon- 
don, Printed for Fohn Allen in Wentworth-street, near Bell-Lane, 1669.” 

50. See Mather’s own summary in his Preface to the Reader. 


THE TEACHER OF THE SECOND CHURCH 95 


dissensions in Boston.** We find that not only Davenport but 
also William Greenhill and William Hook, both prominent Puri- 
tans, considered the book worthy of endorsement, and wrote 
prefaces for it.” The latter points out that it is “written in a plain 
and clear stile, only richly trimmed in the border,” calling atten- 
tion to Mather’s wisdom in freeing the text from crowded refer- 
ences to his authorities. Marginal notes gave the scholarly reader 
the clues he wished. As to the style, Mather’s own words suffice. 
“Only remember,” he wrote, “that this Discourse is the substance 
of several Lecture-Sermons preached in the ordinary course of my 
Ministry to a plain Auditory, and therefore not Elegancy of 
phrases or wisdom of words (I thank Christ I have learned to 
slight such vanities in the sacred and awful things of God). But 
(as far as the nature of the subject will permit) Truths plainly 
delivered, are to be expected.” + Here and there is a poorly 
turned sentence, or a stilted phrase; but everywhere there is 
steadily advancing, clearly wrought exposition not unworthy 
of many a more famous scribe. 

Printed in England, and perhaps also in the Colonies,4 the book 
must have enhanced Mather’s reputation greatly. But “vain- 
glory” was sharply checked. In July, 1668, Jonathan Mitchell 
died. This brought grief to his pupil, to whom he was ever 
beloved.s* The hand of the Lord did not pause, and in April of 
the next year, Richard Mather, visiting his son in Boston, fell ill. 
In the Dorchester church records for the 23d of this month, one 
reads: “Mr. Mather ye teacher of this Church departed this lif 
about 10 of y* Clock on y° evening before being ye first teaching 
officer yt have taken away by death since ye first gathering of 
y° Church w is now 32 yeers & 8 months Compleate.” No 
words from two centuries’ distance can do justice to the “inex- 
pressible loss and sorrow”’ of the loyal son who saw his father 
die. We know how much of Puritanism was bound up in 
Richard Mather, and how faithfully he had served according to 
his lights. One can guess the double grief of the son, who lost 

51. Pages 39, 160 n., 161. 

52. These two prefaces are signed W. G. and W. H., respectively. For their author- 
ship, see Parentator, p. 62. For both men see DNB. 

53. Mather’s Preface to the Reader. The range of his reading is shown by his long 
list of references, printed at the end of his book. 

54. J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, i, 438. 

55. I. Mather, Epistle Dedicatory, in C. Mather, Magnalia, book IV, part ii, chap. 4. 


56. I. Mather, The Life and Death, pp. 78-80; Autobiography; Barrows and Trask, 
Records, pp. 9, 10. 


Wee 


96 INCREASE MATHER 


not merely a dear human father but a father of much that to him 
and his friends was best in New England. Richard Mather re- 
mained teacher to the last. On his deathbed he found time to 
urge Increase to see that “the Rising Generation . . . be brought 
under the Government of Christ in his Church,” pointing his 
words with an explicit plea for the Half-Way Covenant. “Thus 
did that Light that had been shining in the Church above Fifty 
years, Expire.) *7 

Increase, preaching in Dorchester and Boston, writing and 
publishing, entertaining English visitors,%* and winning his 
people’s love, bore bravely his load of sorrow. He saw his father 
laid in the Dorchester churchyard where one may still trace the 
worn letters on the gravestone.’® He had, with his brother 
Timothy, to carry out the terms of his father’s will, and there 
was his aged mother-in-law to shelter. Nor was there long respite 
from grief, for barely three months later his brother Eleazar died 
in Northampton.® His widow and his church turned to Increase, 
who came from Boston late in August. There the burden of the 
last years claimed its toll, and he fell sick of “a fiolent fever”’ 
which brought him “‘near to the gates of death.” In the little 
town, “godly Christians met together to fast and pray for his 
life.” By winter he was able to go home. But nerves made taut 
by hard study and deep feeling were not easily calmed, and, until 


March, “the hypochondrical affection” made him “unable to go 
» abroad.” On March 13 he began his service again, and once 
~ more preached each week. 


With the shock to tired mind and body, came, once more, 
heightened religious zeal, and he cast about eagerly for new roads 

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to God’s service. He found them in planning books that should 
do good. “I considered with myself that if I should write & 

g idered with myself thal 

publish my Father’s life it would be a service not only honorable 
to my Father, but acceptable & honorable to the name of God.” # 
He planned other books, too, and much of his literary activity 
in the next few years dates back to the troubled days of his 
illness. More than once he wrote pages harking back to this 
time of strain, and to the latest of New England’s calamities, the 

57. I. Mather, The Life and Death, pp. 79, 80. 

58. J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, 11, 398. 

sg. Cf. N. B. Shurtleff, Topographical and Historical Description of Boston, 
p. 286. 

60. C. Mather, Magnalia, book III, part ii, chap. 20, section 19. 

61. Autobiography. 62. Lbid. 


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THE TEACHER OF THE SECOND CHURCH 97 


death of John Davenport.® In 1670, Increase Mather felt as 
strongly as ever in his life the impermanence of this world. His 
mood was one of passionate desire to do some last service before 
he, too, should be called to face trial by God. 

Out of this sprang his life of his father.“ The preface was 
dated in September, 1670, and the book was printed at Cam- 
bridge in the same year. Enough has been quoted to give some 
idea of it. All that has been said of the straightforward manner 
of the earlier books holds true here. Moreover, the subject is 
nearer our interests, and we read the little biography to-day 
without boredom and, often, with admiration for a simple dignity 
that comes close to art. It was published anonymously, only the 
preface being signed, but there can have been little mystery in 
its readers’ minds. Whoever was believed to be its author, its 
clear narrative, picked out with anecdote,® surely won it a hear- 
ing. Not only the Dorchester congregation, to whom it was 
dedicated, but good New Englanders everywhere, must have 
read it; a biographer overseas put it almost bodily into a work 
of his own,’ and we to-day, if not quite deaf to seventeenth- 
century thought, may easily linger on many a page. 

It was but the first fruit of the time of stress. Even though 
Mayo, old and infirm, had to give up his active preaching,” 
and threw more and more of the church burdens on his colleague’s 
shoulders, Mather still found time to write. In 1670, probably, 
he signed himself ““M. I.” to the preface to a pair of his brother 
Samuel’s sermons.®* Even a foreword gave Increase Mather space 
to denounce religious ceremonial, to warn his readers against the 


63. March 15, 1670. C. Mather, Magnalia, book III, part i, chap. 4, section 2. 

64. The full title is ““The Life and Death of That Reverend Man of God, Mr. 
Richard Mather, Teacher of the Church in Dorchester in New-England. . . . Cambridge: 
Printed by S.G. and M. . 1670.” The book is reprinted in the Collections of the 
Dorchester Antiquarian and Historical Society, Number 3, Boston, 1850. All refer- 
ences in this book are to that edition. 

65. Cf. pp. 50, 73, 84-86. 

66. Parentator, p. 73; S. Clark, The Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons, pp. 126ff. 

67. H. Ware, Two Discourses, p. 6. 

68. The full title is: “A Testimony from the Scripture against Idolatry & Super- 
stition, In Two Sermons; Upon the Example of that Great Reformer Hezekiah, 2 Kings 
18:4. The first, Witnessing in generall against all the Idols and Inventions of men in the 
Worship of God. The second, more particularly against the Ceremonies, and some 
other Corruptions of the Church of England. Preached, the one September 27. the other 
Septemb. 30, 1660 By Mr. Samuel Mather, Teacher to a Church of Christ in Dudlin in 
Ireland.” No imprint. There is no date given, but Roden lists the book under 1670 
and on p. 135 gives the reason for this dating. 


98 INCREASE MATHER 


opinions, while praising the learning, of Grotius, and to reveal, 
once more, how deeply he himself had read. 

One of his resolves after his father’s death had been to publish 
“some discourses wherein the rising generation should be espe- 
cially concerned . . . for God’s glory, and the good of souls.” % 
These he found in some of Eleazar’s sermons, and he printed them 
with a preface, dated March, 1671, and dedicated to the North- 
ampton church.7° He explains his motive, saying: “ But especially 
I was inclined to Publish what is here presented to you, because the 


dying Counsel which my Reverend Father... left with me, was, 


FPP, 


that I should seriously endeavour the good of the Rising Generation 
in this Country.” 

Two months later, he dated the preface of still another book, 
this time one from his own pen. “The First Principles of New 
England” was written in 1671, although not printed for nearly 
three years.” He made here his first published statement of his 
change from his views of 1662, by collecting testimony from the 
writings of the most respected New England divines as to the 
subject of baptism and in support of the Half-Way view. He 
had access to much material, printed and unprinted, and mar- 
shals a brave array of authority to support his new opinions. 
To his extracts from other writers, he appends a persuasive preface 
of his own. Addressing himself to those who still opposed the 
decision of the Synod and were active in the controversy over 
the founding of the Third Church, he writes: “Brethren I was 
once of your perswasion, and thence can with the more Love 
and Compassion speak unto you.” He avoids the dogmatic, and 
leaves argument to his quoted authorities, which ranged from 
Cotton and Hooker to “sundry eminent Divines of the Congre- 


69. Autobiography. 

70. The full title is: “A Serious Exhortation to the Present and Succeeding Genera- 
tion in New-England; Earnestly calling upon all to Endeavour that the Lords Gracious 
Presence may be continued with Posterity. Being the Substance of the Last Sermons 
Preached By Eleazar Mather, late Pastor of the Church in Northampton in New England. 
. « « Cambridge: Printed by S. G. and M. F. 1671.” 

51. The full title is: “The First Principles of New-England, Concerning The Subject 
of Baptisme &? Communion of Churches. Collected partly out of the Printed Books, but 
chiefly out of the Original Manuscripts of the First and chiefe Fathers in the New-Eng- 
lish Churches; with the Judgment of Sundry Learned Divines of the Congregational 
Way in England, Concerning the said Questions. Published for the Benefit of those who 
are of the Rising Generation in New-England. By Increase Mather, Teacher of a Church 
in Boston in New-England. ... Cambridge Printed by Samuel Green, 1675.” The preface 
is dated “From my Study in Boston N. E. 1. of 3d Moneth, 1671 Who is less then the 
least of all Gods mercies and Saints. Increase Mather.” 


THE TEACHER OF THE SECOND CHURCH 99 
gational way in England.” That one still may feel the skill and 


persuasiveness of the book’s method, is a tribute to its writer, 
and there is no support here for the belief that Puritanism ex- 
pressed itself only in dogmatic style. 

In the early summer, his nerves were still in revolt, and he 
“went to the springs at Lynn, & tarried there some weeks to see 
what might be done for... relief.” Terrified by dreams which 
“sorely molested’? him, he drank the waters and prayed for 
healing from the Lord. He became “much melted and moved” 
and felt some confirmation of his “hope that God was indeed to 
accept of some service” from him. On July 24, on his way home, 
he met “a poor godly woman — her name was Mansfield’”’ who 
“desired those that rode with” him “‘to go forward, for she must 
needs speak with” him. He stopped, and “‘O, Sir, (said she, with 
much affection and tears,) I am troubled at my condition. I 
an afraid that I grieve the good Spirit of God by not being cheer- 
ful as I ought to be. I am dejected, & my soul disquieted; and 
when I meet with afflictions, I lay them too much to heart, and I 
doubt hereby offend so gracious a Father as God has been to me.” 
To a thoroughgoing Puritan, such an encounter revealed the 
hand of God, and Mather writes: “‘I was astonished to hear 
her speak, and to come to me for relief in her temptations. And 
concluded that this poor woman, (who little thought so herself) . 
was a messenger sent of God to me, for she spake to my then 
condition, as if he that knows all things had put words into her 
mouth.” 7 

But, even though he was buoyed up by so direct an admonition 
to conquer his “special infirmities,” there were months more of 
melancholy, of harassing dreams, and of prayers and fasting for 
divine aid. The news of his brother Samuel’s death came at the 
close of this period. He prayed, and in answer there came a mood 
in which his heart was “exceedingly melted.’ ‘“‘Methought,” he 
writes, “I saw God before my eyes, in an inexpressible way, so as 
that I was afraid I should have fallen into a trance in my study.”’?3 

For Mather’s practical temper, the best reply to such profound 
stirrings of soul was in activity, and in the spring he finished 
another “savoury book.” 7 By now Mayo was unable to con- 
tinue even a nominal relation to his church and its sole conduct 
devolved on his comrade in the pulpit.7> With increased respon- 


72. Autobiography. 74. Parentator, p. 74. 
73. Autobiography. 75. Autobiography. 


100 INCREASE MATHER 


sibility Mather worried more as to the scanty rewards the people 
gave him, and grew to hate fiercely the debts he was forced to 
incur.7° Written in such times, his book might well have been 
] slighted; but “Some Important Truths. about Conversion” 77 

shows no signs of scanted labor. It was made up of sermons 
preached to the Second Church, and was printed in London in 
1674, though it was finished in June, 1672. John Owen ™ wrote a 
preface. After speaking of “that respect” which he bore to 
“the worthy Author,” who is “known unto all, unto whom he is 
known,” to be a “person of singular good Learning and Reading” 
(a valuable tribute coming from so great an English Puritan), 
he comments on the style, saying, “Whatever else the Author 
aimed at, it is evident that plainness, perspicuity, gravity in 
delivering the Truth were continually in his eye, nor hath he 
come short of attaining his Design. . . . He hath in this Discourse 
abandoned all Additional Ornaments whatever,” and revealed 
himself as ‘‘a Workman that needeth not to be ashamed.” 
This criticism is just in its summing up of the quality that makes 
_this book, like the others, still worthy of attention from the point 
of view of style. “As to contents, it is a plea for valid conversion, 
a true awakening of God’s grace, in all who read it. Such con- 
version is the sole means of salvation, and comes only through 
the saving mercy of Christ. Everywhere the redeeming power 
of the Saviour is the dominant note. God’s predestination as to 
who shall be subject to this saving grace is not discussed. The 
point is simply that anyone may have been included among the 
elect by divine decree, and, therefore, everyone must pray for 
Christ’s mercy and prepare his heart for it, so that, in its coming, 
he may find assurance of salvation. The old problem of recon- 
-ciling predestination and free will is involved, of course, if one 
reminds himself of it; but in reading the book one finds the accent, 
not on such riddles, but on the humane nature of the Son of God. / 
Like Manfred’s abbot, Mather 


é 
' Did not speak of punishment — 
\ But penitence and pardon. 
76. Autobiography. ~~ é 
77. The full title is: “Some Important Truths about Conversion, Delivered in sun- 
dry Sermons, By Increase Mather, Teacher of a Church at Boston in New-England. ... 
London, Printed for Richard Chiswell, at the Rose and Crown in Pau/s Church-yard, 
Anno 1674.” 
78. For John Owen, one of the great English Puritans, see DNB. 





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THE TEACHER OF THE SECOND CHURCH tor 


Such correction of our favorite belief in Puritan grimness 
deserves to be read. But it is no milk-and-water doctrine after 
all. The great sign of regeneracy is the spiritual combat Mather 
knew so well.7? “There never was any man that did believe, but 
he found hard work of it. Those things then shew, that it is an 
hard matter to obtain Salvation. Carnal hearts would be pleased 
well with it, if Ministers would sow pillows under mens elbows, 
and tell them that they might easily get to Heaven. But Truth 
saith otherwise, God saith otherwise” (p. 241). The Puritan 
saw life as a continual struggle toward the right, and an eternal 
conflict with the flesh, but it was no uninspiring fight. Mercy 
and love played a part that made the warfare of life seem to the 
true believer full of warmth and zest. 

Though for Mather the skies are lightening, and he is now 
“through the Mercy of God in present health,’ he fears lest 
death be near. He alludes to church divisions, pleads for “hu- 
mane learning” as indispensable to true religion, and attacks 
the Church of Rome. There is one relapse into preaching of “hell 
fire” that is almost drastic enough for the nineteenth century, 
and foreshadows almost word for word a fulmination of Jonathan 
Edwards.®° Finally, in this random turning of the leaves, one 
hits upon Mather’s expression of his feeling towards his church. 
It is a fitting summing up for the book and a crisp expression of 
his devotion to the chief duty of his life. To his congregation he 
writes: “A// things are yours; my Gifts (such weak ones as they 
are) my Time, my Studies, all them are yours.” * 

Ill health and financial troubles passed, and Mather wrote 
three more books before 1674. One need not stop long for the 
first, the printing of a sermon preached in 1673 with the title 
“The Day of Trouble is Near.” * It points out the manifest 
evils of the day as auguries of wrath to come. Urian Oakes, 
Mitchell’s successor in Cambridge, soon to become president of 

79. Cf. pp. 46, 47. 

80. Page 224; and compare selection from Edwards in E. C. Stedman and E. M.’ 
Hutchinson, Library of American Literature, ii, 389. 

$1. Preface. 

82. The full title is: “The Day of Trouble is near. Two Sermons Wherein is shewed, 
What are the Signs of a Day of Trouble being near. And particularly, What reason 
there is for New-England to expect 4 Day of Trouble. Also what is to be done, that we 
may escape these things which shall come to pass. Preached (the 11th day of the 12th 


Moneth, 1673. being a day of Humiliation in one of the Churches in Boston. By In- 
crease Mather, Teacher of that Church... . Cambridge: Printed by Marmaduke Fohnson. 


1674.” 


an em 


102 INCREASE MATHER 


the college,®* introduced the book to the “Christian Reader,” 
and pointed to Mather as “this vigilant Watchman and wise 
Discerner of the Signs of the Times.” *4 His vigilance and dis- 
cernment light upon such particulars as pride. “And what Pride 
is there? Spiritual Pride, in Parts and common Gifts of the Spirit, 
and in Spiritual Priviledges; yea carnal, shameful, foolish Pride, 
in Apparel, Fashions, and the like. Whence 1s all that rising up, 
and disobedience in Inferiours towards Superiours, in Families, 
in Churches, and in the Commonwealth, but from the unmortt- 
fied Pride which is in the hearts of the sons and daughters of 
men?... Are there no biting Usurers in New-England? Are there 
not those that grinde the faces of the poor? A poor man cometh 
amongst you, and he must have a Commodity whatsoever it cost 
him, and you will make him give whatever you please, and put 
what price you please upon what he hath to give too, without 
respecting the just value of the thing” (p. 22). There is a modern 
note in this statement of seventeenth-century vices, and a skill in 
pulpit address, well worthy of a later day. The conclusion 1s: 
‘Alas! we have changed our Interest. The Interest of New- 
England was Religion, which did distinguish us from other English 
Plantations... .\When-as now we begin to espouse a Worldly 
Interest, and so to chuse a new God, therefore no wonder that 
War is like to be in the gates”’ (p. 23). But there is a note of 
comfort. ‘Though troubles come, why should we be dismayed 
thereat? for a glorious issue and happy deliverance out of all 
these troubles, shall certainly arise” (p. 18). And the lesson is 
plainly stated as, ““Why then, up and be doing. If thou hast but 
one Tear in thy eyes, if thou hast but one Prayer in thy heart, 
spend it now” (p. 31). 

The call was not unheeded, for, if something better than 
tradition be believed, one of those who heard the sermon was 
moved to change the manner of his life. Thence dates an alliance 
at the root of Mather’s later political power, and the convert to 
“The Day of Trouble” found himself, before twenty years had 
passed, in its author’s debt not only for spiritual gain but also 
for worldly rank. The full story belongs to later times. For 1674 
the episode stands out as bearing witness stronger than pages 
of criticism to the fact that this sermon was effective as uttered 
from the pulpit, and its power was not lost upon men. 


83. J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, 1, 173-183. 
84. See Oakes’s Preface. 


THE TEACHER OF THE SECOND CHURCH 103 


As for the preface to Samuel Torrey’s “Exhortation unto 
Reformation,” *5 it holds no point of interest not revealed in 
Mather’s other works, except that it is one more proof that the 
name of this “least of all saints” ® was one which carried weight 
with buyers of books. 

The last work of this period, the “Wo to Drunkards,” 87 has 
a peculiar claim on us. Unlike most of the treatises of its writer, 
its subject is still a current topic. We are used to read, on this 
subject, matter far more intolerant than this Puritan booklet. 
Perhaps we are right and they were wrong, but Increase Mather’s 
contemporaries did not shun wine, but its abuse; not drinking, 
but excess. Instead of hearing cries for the abolishment of the 
saloon, one reads of alehouses and taverns. “I know that in 
such a great Town as this, there is need of such Houses, and no 
sober Minister will speak against the Licensing of them; but I 
wish there not more of them then there is any need of” (p. 29). 
Again: “Drink is in itself a good creature of God, and to be 
received with thankfulness, but the abuse of drink is from Satan; 
the wine is from God, but the Drunkard is from the Devil”’ (p. 4). 
For once it is not the Puritan who excels us in preaching repres- 
sion and absolute denial. Possibly he realized that the exercise 
_ of temperance and moderation was a character-forming process. 
Certainly he believed that these qualities should have scope to 
work. 

No less striking is the fact that this unenlightened Puritan 
age did not fight a perennial evil with archaic weapons. “Excess 
damages the body,” says Mather, and anticipates in elementary 
fashion the physiological argument of to-day (pp. 9 ff.). He is 
as apt as we are, in his choice of Scripture; and though he shares 
our own tract writers’ delight in references to “‘hellfire,” it is 


85. The full title is: “An Exhortation unto Reformation, Amplified, By a Discourse 
concerning the Parts and Progress of that Work, according to the Word of God. De- 
livered in a Sermon Preached in the Audience of the General Assembly of the Massa- 
chusetts Colony, at Boston in New-England, May 27.1674. Being the Day of Election 
There. By Samuel Torrey, Pastor of the Church of Christ in Waymouth....Cam- 
bridge: Printed by Marmaduke Fohnson. 1674.” 

86. The preface is signed: “Less then the least of all Saints, Increase Mather. 
Boston, N. E. 26. 5. 1674.” 

87. vip full title is: “Wo to Drunkards. Two Sermons Testifying against the Sin of 
Drunkenness: Wherein the Wofulness of that Evil, and the Misery of all that are 
addicted to it, is discovered from the Word of God. Preached by Increase Mather, 
Teacher of a Church in Boston in New-England.... Cambridge: Printed by Marma- 
duke Fohnson. 1673. And Sold by Edmund Ranger Bookbinder in Boston.” 


104 INCREASE MATHER 


not he who makes such allusions a weapon too eagerly used. 
“Do not think,” he declares, “that I love to scare you, with 
the dark visions of that Eternal Night which is hastening upon 
your Souls. Do not think, my Brethren, that I delight in ter- 
rifying you with the sad tidings of Hell and Death. Indeed, 
sometimes I am forced to it. Knowing the terrour of the Lord, I 
seek to perswade you by those Arguments; nevertheless I take 
no pleasure to tell you thereof. But now that I am speaking to 
you of the pardoning grace of God, me-thinks I am in my Ele- 
ment: I could be glad to stay and dwell here, and to enlarge 
myself much to you, would time and strength permit me” (p. 33). 
Are these the words of a Puritan, the foe to tolerance, to liberty, 
the champion of a merciless faith always relentless and grim? 

Aside from its contents, the sermon is admirably shaped to 
its purpose. There are plenty of homely illustrations, more than 
one passage of vigorous phrasing, and a construction planned for 
effect. One reads, to choose at random, “The Drunkards Credit 
is crackt, and lost amongst all sober men; and therefore wise men 
carry towards such, as they would do to a person of no Credit, 
whom they dare not trust. Trust a Drunkard with an Estate, 
and when he is in his Cups hee’ll send it going: Trust him with a 
Secret, and when he is drunken hee’II discover it; Trust him, and 
when he is drunken he will undo himself and his friend too” (p. g). 
Like preachers of all times, he plays on the readiest means, the 
influential men in the pews. “There are sundry of you that stand 
in some Publick Capacity, Townsmen, Constables, Grand Fury- 
men, &c. Behold, the word of the Lord is unto you in particular 
this day; I lay the solemn charge of God upon you, that you do 
your utmost towards the suppression of this abounding iniquity. 
Kill this Serpent, before it be grown too big for you”’ (p. 29). 

In 1674, Increase Mather undertook two new public offices, and 
stood upon the threshold of a larger career. He was proved an 
author more prolific than any other in New England. His books 
were greeted by the faithful at home and abroad. In the church, 
his task had been well done. In the town, he was welcomed and 
sought. Most important of all, his heart was tested by sickness, 
bereavement, and the temptations that assaulted him had broken 
harmless against the strong wall of his devotion to God. He 
worked himself into emotional transports of worship, and, with 
all the abandonment of a medieval fanatic, revelled in his strug- 
gle toward Heaven. He examined himself constantly, and, if 


THE TEACHER OF THE SECOND CHURCH 105 


one will, morbidly. He saw in the commonest happenings of 
the day, direct signs of God’s hand. But above all was his domi- 
nant practical strain. Idle dreams were not the only fruits of 
these years. Hence he craved a chance for self-forgetful service, 
and, in the same breath, complained of his scanty wage. Hence 
he was tempted to vainglory and tinged with earthly mindedness, 
though many of his days were spent in fasting and prayer. There 
was no basic incongruity, for his belief was not one to flourish 
merely in solitary ecstasies, nor could his nature stop short of 
tangible achievement. Puritanism demanded both emotion and 
action. Mather was by temperament a Puritan, and one who 
expressed himself best in the everyday affairs of the world. His 
imaginative and emotional side was the driving force. His prac- 
tical temper, degenerating at its worst to material yearnings and 
personal ambition, served him well in carrying him beyond good 
words to good works, from speculation to accomplishment, and 
from love of God to trenchant service of His will. Thus the 
troubles of his spirit brought forth not merely fasting but more 
and more sermons, and books “which being wholly practical... 
speak to the life of Religion.” ** His grief for father, brothers, and 
teachers led him not merely to fears and repinings, but to staunch 
resolution to bear, himself, the standard of those who had gone 
before. Life was a stern fight, but he battled joyously in the 
intensity of his faith. The Bible was the guide, and for him its 
truest teaching lay, not in Old Testament laws, but in its revela- 
tion of the mercy of Christ.*® His creed was one for strong men. 
His cry was not for peace or holy calm, but for a chance to strive 
and serve. He loved deeds above words, and aspired toward 
definite tasks. In doing them he thrust himself head and shoul- 
ders above his fellows, but he could not rest. Trained in the fight, 
he still sought service, and opportunity lay waiting. 

88. I. Mather, Some Important Truths, Preface. 

89. J. T. Adams (The Founding, p. 80), says that the Puritans drew their texts al- 
most exclusively from the Old Testament. I have found no evidence for this. For some 
examination of just how much the Puritans used the Old Testament as compared with 


the New, see K. B. Murdock, ‘‘The Puritans and the New Testament,” in Colonial 
Society Publications, xxv, 239ff.; and printed separately, Cambridge, 1924. 


CHAPTER X 


PUBLIC LIFE 
Gs May 27, 1674, the General Court “granted that there may 


be a printing press elswhere then at Cambridge,” and, “for 
the better regulation of the press,” voted that there be added to 
the former licensers, Thomas Thatcher and Increase Mather. A 
rigid governmental censorship of all that was printed in New 
England sounds to-day like bigotry run mad. Yet the colonies 
were not more stern than the mother country; the Puritan was no 
more intolerant than Charles II. Censorship of the press was 
sanctioned by English custom, and although the licensing acts 
expired by limitation in 1679, a common-law doctrine was 
promptly found to cover the case, and its application was, in 
effect, almost as thorough as the licensing system had. been. 
Leaders in both Englands knew the power of the press, and the 
need for its control. The Puritans of Massachusetts, with an eye 
for logical organization, saw its relation to education, and for 
nearly forty years had kept printing under the wing of the 
College. The starting of a press in Boston was proof of colonial 
growth, and Increase Mather’s appointment to share in its regu- 
lation, testifies to the standing he had won.? 

His duties do not seem to have been arduous. The seven years 
after Mather’s appointment were “‘so free... from all disturb- 
ances on account of disorderly printing, that the occasional 
filling of vacancies in the board of licensers gives the only notice 
of its existence.” As late as 1685 the censorship was still in 
force, and “‘before the abrogation of the charter... and the in- 
stitution of a government not of their own choosing, the people 
of Massachusetts as a whole could not feel any serious deprivation 
in restrictions upon the freedom of the press.” 

More important at the time, and in relation to what followed, 
was Mather’s entry, in the same year, upon another public 

1. Mass. Rec., v, 4. 

2. Cf. C. A. Duniway, The Development of Freedom of the Press in Massachusetts, 


especially pp. 23ff., 55, 56, 58, 59. 
3. Lbid., pp. 54, 57, 58, 61, 62. 


PUBLIC LIFE 107 


office. On December 11, 1674, a vote of the Harvard College 
Corporation reads “ffor the filling up the corporation in its num- 
ber of seaven. The sd society doth also unanimously choose the 
Rev? Mr Urian Oakes & M: Thomas Sheppard & Mr Increase 
Mather as ffellowes of the sd Colledg.”” On March 15 following, 
this action was confirmed by the Overseers. The appointment 
was to a post reserved for recognized leaders. That Mather was 
faithful to his trust appears in the record that during the next 
nine years he attended all but four of the twenty-two Corpora-/ 
tion meetings for which minutes are preserved.4 

Hoar resigned the Presidency on the day that Mather was 
finally elected as Fellow. Urian Oakes was chosen to fill Hoar’s 
place, but refused, contenting himself with assuming the active 
guidance of Harvard, becoming President in all but name. 
This state of affairs continued for four years, during which Mather 
wrote in his diary: “The Colledge is still desolate.” © Efforts were 
made to remedy this condition. The Reverend John Rogers was 
elected President, but declined, and Stoughton vainly sought for 
a candidate from abroad.’ Mather himself, closely in touch with 
Oakes, was more than once suggested for the leadership. Oakes 
told him in May, 1675, that all the scholars knew he might have 
the place if he would. Far from accepting it, he was inclined to 
lay down his Fellowship to quiet rumors that he sought higher 
office. His friends expostulated and told him that if he would 
"accept of ye Presidentship, it”? would be “selfe denial.” § And, 
in 1681, after Oakes had relented, accepted the President’s chair, 
and died in office, the records read “Reverend M: Increase Mather 
was chosen President of Harvard Colledge.” ° In answer he 
"told ym, yt except ye church to wch” he was “related sld con- 
sent to my leaving ym” he “cld not,” and he believed “yy wld 
not consent yrunto.’ He hated the thought of leaving Boston, 
and feared lest his congregation consent to part with him, so that 
he would be “voted out of ye Town.” His qualms were unneces- 
sary; his church refused to give him up, and he declined the call.t° 


4. Cf. Harv. Rec., especially pp. 59, 231. 

5. Ibid., p. 231; J. Quincy, History, i, 35. 

6. Entry in Mather’s diary for 1675-76 (ed. by Green), for March IONIC TE MnCr. also, 
entry for Oct. 7, 1675. 

7- J. Quincy, History, i, 35; Harv. Rec., p. 238. 

8. Diary, 1675-76, May 28, June 18, 1676. 9. Harv. Rec., p. 68. 

10. MS. Diary, 1680-84, Sept. 8, 1681. Cf. also, I. Mather, Practical Truths, Preface 
(1682), and Autobiography. 


108 INCREASE MATHER 


There is no better clue to much that is often misread in his later 
connection with Harvard, than the memory that he not only 
never sought office, but twice refused to become President. 

Though his church transcended in Mather’s mind any claim of 
the college in remote Cambridge, he found many ways to serve 
the latter. He aided the Treasurer in the management of legacies, 
urged Oakes to become President, and when the place was vacant 
again, voted for his good friend, Samuel Torrey, to fill it.* He 
conducted at least two Commencements, and, whatever his in- 
terest on other grounds, found in Cotton’s admission as a fresh- 
man an added tie to Harvard.” Like more than one gentus since 
his day, Cotton Mather did not easily adapt himself to college. 
His father prayed for his success, and worried over what seems to 
have been a seventeenth-century outbreak of hazing. Samuel 
Danforth and Urian Oakes.were complained to, and the difficulty 
blew over. There was balm for all wounds in Cotton’s Com- 
mencement, for Oakes, in his oration, praised not only the pupil 
but the father, whom he named “the most watchful of guardians, 
the most distinguished Fellow of the College.” ™4 

There are few red letter days in Harvard’s progress from 1675 
to 168s. Its history is written in dissensions, difficulties in secur- 
ing a leader, occasional bequests, and elections of new Overseers 
or Fellows. Yet, even in this stagnant time, it sent out year by 
year handfuls of graduates, and maintained the foundations on 
which Mather and later leaders were to build.** Two hostile 
accounts, written in these years, paint the picture in its darkest 
aspect, telling of the college hall so thick with smoke that a Dutch 
visitor declared, ‘This is certainly a tavern’’; of the students 
ignorant of Latin; and of the Library “where there was nothing 
particular.” * The old college building partly collapsed in 1677, 
but the new Harvard Hall, begun in 1672, was almost ready to 
replace it, though, “by reason of the... Indian warre,” 1t was 
“not yet finished.” 77 


11. Harv. Rec., pp. 67, 69, 239, 243. 

12. Ibid., pp. 240, 241; Autobiography; MS. Diary, July 27, 1682; Diary, June 22, 
1675. 

13. Lbid., July 16, 26; Harv. Rec., p. 228. 

14. J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, iii, 6, 7. 

15. Ibid., vols. ii and iii; J. Quincy, History, vol. i, chap. 2. 

16. Long Island Historical Society Memoirs, 1, 384, 385. 

17. T. Hutchinson, Collection, 11, 238; A. McF. Davis, Early College Buildings, 
pp. 15, 16. 


PUBLIC LIFE 109 


There is more in these words than concerns Harvard, for “‘the 
... Indian war” was New England’s first great trial by the 
sword.*® With our tradition of years without warfare on American 
soil, and ignorant as we are of the actual horrors of Indian raids, 
we too easily forget how devastating was New England’s intro- 
duction to battle. If the “armies”’ were too small to deserve the | 
name,*® if the fighting was occasional, and the advances mere 
guerilla raids, there were laid waste, none the less, sixteen towns 
in thinly settled Massachusetts alone. One man in every sixteen 
of military age was killed.?° If the shock of the United States’ 
greatest and most recent war seems profound, how severely must 
the colonies have been shaken by a conflict taking a toll far 
greater in proportion than that of the European strife. And, 
when one remembers that here was fighting, not three thousand 
miles away but at the colonists’ very doors, one sees why the 
College building was delayed, and why the brand of Philip’s 
War burned deep in the minds of all who survived it. 

Mather, least of all, was heedless of its bloody course. Before 
his eyes, the prophecies of his “Day of Trouble” were coming 
true, and, nurtured on Puritanism and Scriptural lore, he saw 
the whole struggle as the vengeance of God upon his people.” 
The stamp of this idea is on all he wrote in these turbulent years, 
and from it came strength for his rooted belief that the Lord 
reveals himself in human affairs and punishes sin by calamities 
on earth, just as He repays good deeds by salvation from the 
perils of this life. The warning seemed obvious, and, in his 
pulpit, Mather used it to the full. In private prayer he strove 
to atone for his share in the sins that had brought condign chas- 
tening to the colony.” If from such preaching and such thought 
came a too superstitious attitude toward the smallest daily event, 
it was but one more expression of the emotional effect worked in 
all countries and in all times after great wars, acting here upon 
men prepared by traditional beliefs to see in earthly conflicts 
evidence of the all-powerful anger of God. 

The immediate influence upon Mather has special interest 

18. Channing, 11, 76-79, 92; G. W. Ellis and J. E. Morris, King Philip’s War; J. T. 
Adams, The Founding, chap. 14. 

1g. I. Mather, Brief History, p. 211. 

20. For various estimates, cf. Channing, ii, 79; Palfrey, iii, 215; J. T. Adams, The 
Founding, p. 363. 

a1. I. Mather, Brief History, p. 42. 

22. Cf. Diary, 1675-76. 


I1O INCREASE MATHER 


for us. These were memorable days, and only history could 
preserve their lesson for generations to come. From a vantage- 
oint in the social centre of the colonies, Mather had watched the 
shifting fortunes of the war, and had interpreted the news of each 
day in accordance with his faith. He knew his literary leadership 
in New England, and, always sensitive to all that affected his rank 
in the community, saw the prestige to be gained by the historian 
of the war. As an experienced preacher, too, he saw homiletic 
possibilities in a chronicle of the strife. Accordingly, he hurried 
to the press his “Brief History of the War with the Indians.” * 
The detailed narrative of King Philip’s War need not concern 
us, but the book claims attention from other points of view. 
Primarily, it was Mather’s first essay toward the writing of his- 
tory, and his first book not essentially theological in theme. It is 
the effort not so much of a.preacher driving home truths of doc- 
trine, as of “an Historian .. . endeavouring to relate things truly 
and impartially,” and doing his best not to “lead the Reader into 
a Mistake.’ He showed his literary judgment, and brought 
refutation for those who would see in all Puritans mere dogmatists 
and pedants, by telling the tale without crowding Biblical refer- 
ences, and comparatively unencumbered by citations of learned 
works. When one has said that his pages show obvious marks of 
haste, that his fear lest his “defective manner of management in 
this History renders it unprofitable” because of “the other 
employments” he had, is sometimes justified, and that the book 
is not soundly selected and critical history, with insight into the 
broader relations of events, but merely a day-by-day chronicle of 
happenings reported by letters and word-of-mouth accounts 
delivered when the news was fresh, one has told the worst. On 
the other side there remains the value that comes from the very 
23. The full title is: ““A Brief History of the Warr With the Jndians in Nevv-Eng- 
land, (From Fune 24, 1675. when the first English-man was murdered by the Indians, 
to August 12. 1676. when Philip, alias Metacomet, the principal Author and Beginner 
of this Warr, was slain.) Wherein the Grounds, Beginning, and Progress of the Warr, is 
summarily expressed. Together with a Serious Exhortation to the Inhabitants of that 
Land.— By Increase Mather, ... Boston... 1676.” This was also printed in the same 
year in London, without the ‘‘Exhortation,” although the title-page still referred to it. 
The omission was due to the fact that the English publisher printed from an imperfect 
copy (MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 576). There was a reprint in 1862, by S. G. Drake, to 
which all references in this book are made. That Mather felt a keen rivalry with other 
writers is suggested by his correspondence in regard to Hubbard, a fellow historian. 
For example, John Cotton writes him there are more mistakes than truths in Hubbard’s 


book (MHS Coll., Series 4, vili, 232); and again (Jdid., 233, 234). Mather apparently 
quoted Cotton, to the latter’s dismay. See his letter ([did., 234, 235). 


PUBLIC LIFE III. 


journalistic quality of his method. A collection of facts, undi- 
gested though they be, made at the time of their occurrence, has 
abiding historic worth. And Mather’s telling of the story is 
marked always by directness and an eye for the stirring and 
significant in incident. He who would form a vivid picture of 
King Philip’s War may go farther and fare no better.?4 

More than one page deserves reading. Among them, there is 
Mather’s statement of his aim. He writes: “I earnestly wish that 
some eftectual Course may be taken (before it be too late) that a 
just History of New-England, be written and published to the 
World. That is a thing that hath been often spoken of, but was 
never done to this day, and yet the longer it is deferred, the more 
difficulty will there be in effecting of it” (p. 37). To this idea he 
returned again, urged by his friends; and, a score of years later, 
his son came near accomplishing the task outlined. 

There is illumination of a different sort in Mather’s justification 
of the acts which brought on the war. It is relegated to a Post- 
script, saving the body of the book for the narrative itself. Its 
pages may not meet all criticisms of the Puritans’ course with the 
Indians, but they leave no doubt, at least, as to what the English 
believed their rights to be. It is doubtful whether, in all the tragic 
history of the contact of white man and Indian on this continent, 
there is much to choose between Puritans and their successors. 
By its nature the problem was difficult, and for finite mortals, 
faced not with the problem of writing history on grounds of 
abstract theory, but with that of conducting a practical day-by- 
day relation with the savages, the riddle seems to have been 
proved by experience to be insoluble without injustice or worse. 

The practical nature of the case is often to the fore in Mather’s 
account. Relating how the war began upon “‘a day of solemn 
Humiliation” in Plymouth, he comments, ‘The Providence of 
God is deeply to be observed, that the Sword should be first 
drawn upon” such a day, “the Lord thereby declaring from 
Heaven that he expected something else from his People besides 
Fasting and Prayer.” Akin to this spirit is the desire to see God 
as well as man expressing Himself in deeds, turning the weapons 
of the English upon their own soldiers, as a payment for sins, 
and manifesting His might in prodigies.?* God’s hand was in 
every affair of life; the Bible revealed His power on earth. These 


24. Cf. pp. 36, 37. 25. Cf. pp. §5, 11g, 120, 158. 


112 INCREASE MATHER 


beliefs, and the emotional receptivity encouraged by public calam- 
ity, made Mather’s harping on the “remarkable providences”’ of 
God eminently fit for the edification of his readers, and the 
expression of his own faith. 

Finally, one may not overlook several bits of good narrative. 
Mather often used to the full the dramatic possibilites of his sub- 
ject. Telling of Captain Hutchinson’s flight, he relates: “Hun- 
dreds of Indians beset the House, and took possession of a Barn 
belonging thereunto, from whence they often shot into the House, 
and also attempted to set fire to it six times, but could not prevail, 
at last they took a Cart full of Flax and other combustible matter, 
and brought it near the House, intending to set it on fire; and then 
there was no appearing possibility, but all the Exg/ish there, Men 
and Women, and Children must have perished, either by unmer- 
ciful flames, or more unmerciful hands of wicked Men, whose 
tender Mercies are cruelties, so that all hope that they should be 
saved was then taken away, but behold in the Mount of Difficulty 
and Extremity, the Lord is seen. 

“For in the very nick of opportunity God sent that worthy 
Major Willard...” And there follows the tale of the rescue.” 

“Thus have we a brief, plain, and true Story of the War with 
the Indians in New-England, how it began, and how it hath made 
its progress... . Designing only a Breviary of the History of this 
war, | have not enlarged upon the circumstances of things, but 
shall leave that to others who have advantages and leasure to go 
on with such an undertaking”’ (p. 201). 

One needs no better summary of the book, than this by its 
author. However modest its design, it must have created some- 
thing of a sensation when it first appeared on the counters of 
Edmund Ranger, or John Foster, its publisher, “over against 
the Sign of the Dove.” 77 In England an edition came out from 
the shop of Richard Chiswell ?§ in the same year as the Boston 
issue, and we have some evidence that it was eagerly received.?9 

With what has been said of King Philip’s War, one sees why 
it was the great historical feature of New England history in 1675 
and 1676. Estimates of the affair vary, and it is the fashion to 
belittle the achievement of the colonists in bringing it to success.° 

265 Fp, 07; 68,0, Cle also, Dense 

27. T. G. Wright, Literary Culture, p. 115. 

28. Cf. DNB; MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 576. 


29. Ibid., vil, 239, 581; but see also, [did., 576. 
30. Cf. J. T. Adams, The Founding, pp. 349-351. 


PUBLIC LIFE 113 


Mather would have agreed to this. He is careful to say “that as 
to Victoryes obtained, we have no cause to glory in anything that 
we have done, but rather to be ashamed and confounded for our 
own wayes.... God hath let us see that he could easily have 
destroyed us, by such a contemptible enemy as the Indians have 
been in our eyes, yea, he hath convinced us that we our selves 
could not subdue them” (p. 206). More serious, and with less 
relation to fact, is the charge that such barbarities as marked the 
English conduct of the war were due to the clergy, whereas “the 
people were more merciful than the ministers.” 3* Yet it was 
the clergy who pleaded for the conversion of the Indians by the 
Gospel, and urged their protection from white traders. It was 
the people who murdered Indian captives in cold blood,*3 and it 
was Increase Mather, a minister, who deplored their acts.3+. It 
was the divines who led in the effort to restore friendly inter- 
course between the two races in New England.’5 The only color 
for the theory of a merciful people opposed to cruel church lead- 
ers has been drawn from the affair of Philip’s son, who was cap- 
tured, and, for a time, threatened with death.*° Because his fate 
had to be decided by the civil authorities; because the civil 
authorities asked advice of the ministers; and because some of 
them queried whether the boy, child though he was, should not 
be put to death, the clergy have been charged with barbarity.3? 
The fact remains that he was not executed, but sold into slavery, 
a punishment which seems inhuman to-day, but was by no 
means so brutal in seventeenth-century eyes. It was then quite 
as reasonable a proceeding in the case of a dangerous political 
foe, as was an exile to St. Helena in a later age. The sparing of 
the life of Philip’s son cannot be shown by any evidence what- 
soever to have been the work of the people as distinct from the 
ministers, whereas we have exact records showing that more than 
one divine favored the merciful course.s* Only by unsupported 

31. J. T. Adams, The Founding, p. 362 (but cf. Idid., Bagals 

32. I. Mather, Brief History, Preface, p. 99. Cf. also, any life of John Eliot, the 
Indian missionary. 

33- Ellis and Morris, King Philip’s War, p. 132; MHS Proc., xxxiii, 405; American 
Antiquarian Society Transactions, ii, 482. 

34. I. Hutchinson, History, i, 307; MHS Proc., xxxiii, 403. 

35. Cf. I. Mather, Serious Exhortation, pp. 25, 26. 

36. Palfrey, iii, 221 and n.; J. T. Adams, The Founding, PP 302.03. 

Syl id., Pp. 362. 


38. MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 690. Cf. also, Eliot, as referred to in J. T. Adams, 
The Founding, p. 362. 


II4 INCREASE MATHER 


conjecture can New England citizens of 1676 be translated into 
the role of humane advocates for the representative of a race 
which had pillaged their homes and slain their wives. 

Mather has had to take his share of the groundless accusation 
brought against the clergy, because of one letter which he wrote 
to John Cotton, a professed advocate of the death penalty. He 
declared that he believed “some effectual course’”’ should be 
taken with Philip’s son, remarking that, if Hadad had not fled, 
“David would have taken a Course that”’ he “should never have 
proved a scourge to the next Generation.” 3? This letter is mild, 
when read in the light of Cotton’s explicit plea for the boy’s 
execution,*° and certainly all it contains applies quite as well to 
the condemnation of the captive to exile and slavery, as to sen- 
tencing him to die. If Mather believed the youngest of New 
England’s foes should be killed, it is strange, in view of his habit 
of speaking plainly, that he did not say so. It is even more 
curious to read elsewhere that he had been rebuked for urging 
a friend not to wish the hanging of Indians, lest their innocent 
blood cry out.4t Clearly the case against Mather, as an individ- 
ual, is not proved. Moreover, the ministers as a class cannot be 
shown to have been cruel judges, restrained only by the will of a 
more humane people. 

There was more to do than to chronicle the events of the war 
years. New England was more than once in dire need, and to the 
leaders of the Second Church, especially to Mather, came oppor- 


tunity to win help for them from abroad.” Also, since the war 


was God’s vengeance upon sinners, the ministers were called upon 
to decide what had been done amiss, and where lay means 
of amendment and reformation.#* Mather turned eagerly to 
the task. Urged by him, the General Court met to consider the 
necessary reforms.‘# It has been said that they decided that the 
Lord “‘was then engaged in burning towns and murdering women 
and children along the frontier, because Massachusetts had be- 
come somewhat lax in persecuting the Quakers, and because her 
men had begun to wear periwigs and their women to indulge in 

39. MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 690. Of this, J. T. Adams, The Founding, p. 362, 
says: “‘Increase Mather... called for the lad’s blood!” 

40. MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 689. 

41. MHS Proc., xxxiii, 402. 

42. Parentator, p. 76; Autobiography; MHS Coll., Series 4, viil, 9, 261ff., 6goff. 


43. I. Mather, Brief History, pp. 98ff.; Mass. Rec., v, 59ff. 
44. Parentator, p. 76; MHS Proc., xxxiii, 399ff., entry for Nov. 9, 1675. 


PUBLIC LIFE IIs 


‘cutting, curling and immodest laying out theire haire.’” 4 Such 
statement, following that of an avowed enemy of the Puritan 
régime in New England,* can be made only on a basis of prej- 
udice, or in ignorance of what the Court actually did. What they 
recommended in reality was the correction of immodest and ex- 
travagant dress (which included modes of dressing the hair), the 
bearing of “due testimony... against such as are false Wor- 
shippers, especially Idolatrous Quakers, who set up Altars against 
the Lords Altar, yea who set up a Christ whom the Scriptures 
know not” (this is by no means an explicit plea for “persecu- 
tion,” be it noted); the taking of measures to prevent drunken- 
ness, the abolition of unnecessary Taverns, and the prohibition of 
profanity, and of sabbath-breaking. There is a plea that “there 
may be no more such oppression, either by Merchants or day- 
Labourers as heretofore hath been,” an appeal for safeguarding 
the Indians against the evil influence of the English traders, and, 
finally, an appeal for Christian education for the children of the 
colony.47yTo summarize such a document by referring to the 
only two of its items which seem out of place to-day, when hair- 
dressing and Quakers are not considered public dangers, is like 
judging the date of a poem by a single, carefully chosen archaic 
word. Read as a whole, this Puritan declaration shows in all 
but one of its main clauses the stuff that reformers’ dreams are 
made on in the twentieth century as in the seventeenth. The 
same things that Mather and his contemporaries saw as crying 
evils are to-day favorite topics for discussion by school com- 
mittees, legislatures, and the press. Even in our enlightened age, 
labor problems, standards of dress, and Sunday laws are of 
interest. Such matters are the property of no one age or sect. 
But, however sound its judgments, the General Court could 
not check misfortune. Boston, with its many homes mourning 
their losses in the war, and its pulpits thundering admonitions 
lest God find further cause to chasten, passed from the shock of 
battle to the terrors of an epidemic, with coffins meeting one 
another in the streets.#* Fire was a third trial. On November 27, 
1676, Mather wrote in his diary: “A dismal day. Near my dwell- 
ing a fire broke out about 5h am. & consumed Houses & many ~ 


45. J. T. Adams, The Founding, p. 349. 

46. Mr. Adams chooses to follow a letter of Edward Randolph, printed in R. N. 
Toppan, Edward Randolph, ii, 225ff., especially 244. 

47. I. Mather, Brief History, pp. 98ff. 48. MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 383, 384. 


116 INCREASE MATHER 


goods. Among others my house & the house appointed for 
solemnizing the publick worship of God were consumed. Yet 
there was... great mixture of mercy with judg for tho’ the wind 
was high yet it rained much w® prevented the house from taking 
fire so soon as else would have been. Also divers houses being 
blown up & the wind suddenly fallen though this end of the 
Town was in extreme danger the wind being southeast many 
habitations are yet spared.” 49 Sewall adds: “Mr. Mather 
saved his Books and other Goods.” 8° “There were burnt down 
Mr Increase Mather’s house, Mt Jeremiah Cushings, Thomas 
Moores, tenements all of them, which brought him in 70 or 80£ 
pt Ann Rents, Lieut Way’s House, D Stone’s houses, M: John 
Winsle’s, Mr Anthony Checkley’s new house with sundry others 
that were considerable. About 5 houses were blown up which 
was a means to prevent the spreading of the fire. About 70 or 80 
families dispossessed of their dwellings & lodgings some losing all 
they had." 

The town’s one fire engine was overmatched by this first 
“Great Fire” of Boston. Ladders, long-handled hooks, swabs on 
poles, were called into play, and householders, aided by the rain, 
battled fiercely to save their goods.” Yet, when the roar of the 
flames had ceased, a large part of the North part of the town lay 
in ruins, the Mather family was homeless, and their church a 
heap of ashes. But the precious books, so dear to Increase’s 
heart, were saved except for a few, and the generosity of one of 


his flock helped to make good the loss.53 Less devastating than 


_ the second great fire of 1679,* the conflagration of 1676 was to the 
Second Church and its Teacher a cruel blow. 

The Mathers, for the first day or so afterward, were “kindly 
entertayned at Mr. Richards.” *° On November 29, after spend- 
ing the morning drying the books, they moved to Captain Bre- 
don’s old house, which, with the street before it, had made the 
stage for the colonists’ final dramatic defiance of the Royal 
Commissioners. | 

49. Diary, 1675-76 (p. 47 of the reprint). 50. MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 29. 

s1. Capt. Lawrence Hammond’s journal, in the reprint of I. Mather’s Diary for 
1675~76, Pp. 54. 

52. N. B. Shurtleff, 4 Topographical... Description, p. 641. 

3. Autobiography; Parentator, p. 79; J. H. Tuttle, The Libraries, pp. 291 ff. 

54. Cf. Diary, Aug. 8, 1679. 

55. Lbid., Nov. 27, 1676; Memorial History of Boston, 1, 578. 

56. Diary, Nov. 29, 1676; A. H. Thwing, The Crooked and Narrow Streets, pp. 61, 


PUBLIC LIFE ULy 


The controversy then momentarily ended by the refusal of 
Massachusetts to comply with the royal command was still alive. 
Its development gave every loyal New Englander more worries 
than Indians, disease, or fire.5? England’s imperial policy found 
the Bay Colony a thorn in its path. The charter was to the 
colonist the keystone of an independent government. He was 
by no means scrupulous in observing England’s laws for her 
outlying possessions, and he lent to her imperial aspirations a 
most unsympathetic ear. 

With 1676 England began a new and more vigorous attempt 
to enforce her will, and one of her first acts was to send Edward 
Randolph to New England as the special messenger of the crown. 
Loathed by Mather and his followers, he was by no means with- 
out dexterity as a diplomat.’* He suffered from an inability to 
lose, himself, what he most blamed in the Puritans — a belief 
that his own church and the government he represented were 
best for New England. Royal authority and the English church 
must replace local institutions as the established rule for the 
colonial church and state.5® Randolph and his masters, it has_ 
been urged, stood for tolerance and religious liberty, as opposed 
to Puritan persecution and narrowness.°° One needs no more 
than a glance at Randolph’s letters to see the utter fallacy of 
such an idea. He sought tolerance just in so far as the Puritans 
sought it in their migration to America. In other words, he 
sought it not at all, save for one church. He did not insist that 
the English church merely stand beside the Congregational in 
New England, or that an Episcopal school be founded to take 

57. Cf. Channing, ii, 157-164; Palfrey, iii, 7-9; J. T. Adams, The Founding, chap. 15. 

58. Cf. Channing, ii, 160, 161. 

$9. See Randolph’s letters in R. N. Toppan, Edward Randolph. It must be remem- 
bered that, when Randolph urged English laws for the colonies, he urged laws which 
regarded the Episcopal church as the official religious institution of the state. He lists, 
among laws repugnant to those of England: ‘“‘No person whatsoever shall joine any 
persons in marriage but a magistrate” (Toppan, ii, 233). To alter this law, to establish 
ecclesiastical marriages, would be to strike at a fundamental tenet of Puritanism. Nor 
was Randolph content to make both civil and ecclesiastical marriages legal, which 
would have been the obvious course of tolerance, but wrote to the Bishop of London: 
“but one thing will mainely helpe, when no marriages heereafter shall be allowed law- 
full but such as are made by the ministers of the church of England” (Jdid., iii, 148). 
To pass such a rule would be to force all Puritans who married to do so by a ceremony 
of which they thoroughly disapproved, administered by a Church they disliked. Other 
points in which Randolph urges general regulations, which would mean the giving 


up of fundamental Congregational tenets, can easily be found in his correspondence in 


Toppan. 
60. Cf. J. T. Adams, The Founding, pp. 395ff. 


118 INCREASE MATHER 


those for whom Harvard was too narrow.” Preferably, Congre- 
gational Harvard was to be stamped out, and the Puritan meet- 
‘ing-house was to be thrown open to all who would be admitted 
to the English church.” He was shrewd enough, probably, to see 
that this meant the destruction of Congregationalism, which 
differed from the parent establishment chiefly in the very restric- 
tions of admission and discipline which he proposed to destroy. 
Right or wrong from a legal point of view, the colonists saw in the 
English policy the undermining of the foundation on which their 
fathers had built their state; and, probably, those among them 
who are called to-day “liberals” for their adherence to Ran- 
dolph’s views,® acted simply from indifference to the theocratic 
ideal and interest in the material advantages of harmony with 
the mother country. They could hardly have cherished any 
illusions that “‘religious liberty” or tolerance for all creeds would 
result from the proposed change in régime. 

The colonial case was put first into the hands of Stoughton 
and Bulkeley, who went to England as agents, but with very 
limited powers. Against them, Randolph was volubly reciting 
his list of Massachusetts’ errors, with some neglect of the line 
between falsehood and truth.®® Sometimes his statements were 
obviously untrue. Sometimes they were quite as obviously based 
on fact. A third group of charges arose from a fundamental dis- 
parity in the thinking of the colonists and that of Englishmen at 
home. For example, Randolph declared that English citizens 

61. Cf. Toppan, Edward Randolph, iv, 90; vi, 245, 246; 1v, 132. 

62. Randolph declared, April 8, 1678, that the King had ordered that “all persons 
of good and honest lives should be admitted to ye Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and 
their Children to Baptisme,” and complained that this ruling was ignored. To obey it 
would have been to destroy Congregationalism, not to be tolerant for all sects. It will 
be noted that Randolph here does not refer to the establishment of Anglican churches 
beside Congregational ones, which would have been the course of tolerance, but to 
admitting people of good behavior to communion, without any of the tests which 
seemed so important to Puritans, and played so large a part in the distinguishing of 
their polity from others. (Jéid., 11, 293.) Cf. also, [did., 11, 312ff. 

63. Prominent among these were Governor Simon Bradstreet, William Stoughton, 
and Joseph Dudley. The Governor’s attitude was a weak desire to please everyone. 
See Palfrey, iii, 362. Dudley was a politician first of all. On Stoughton see n. 64. 

64. Mass. Rec., v, 99ff., 113-117. William Stoughton was moderate, and favored 
submission to the English demands. He was a generous benefactor to the college, 
and often a good servant of New England, though he suffers from his vigorous prosecu- 
tion of the Salem witches. For his life see Sibley, Biographical Sketches, i, 194ff. Peter 
Bulkeley, son of Peter Bulkeley, first minister of Concord, was Speaker of the House 


of Deputies, and believed to be opposed to the English view. Palfrey, iii, 293, 294. 
65. Palfrey, iii, 296ff., especially 301, 301 n. 


PUBLICPEIED, Ilg 


had been executed in Massachusetts on account of their religious 
views. This the colonists denied, for the civil disturbances of the 
Quakers, and their utter disregard for the sentences imposed 
upon them, were made grounds for their suffering the penalty of 
death.© From their point of view the Puritans’ assertion was 
true, but to an Englishman, unimpressed with the theocratic 
ideal of the integral relation of civil and religious discipline, their 
defence seemed quibbling, or even falsehood. 

The English authorities gave a decision which, even to the | 
most prejudiced eyes, seems absolutely just.5? They supported | 
the original Massachusetts charter, but objected, quite reason-/ 
ably, to making the word of God the basis of laws involving life 
and death so long as it could be interpreted only by fallible) 
human means. They pointed to the legislation which punished 
stubborn and rebellious children by death, fined those who cele- 
brated Christmas, and opposed heresy, as being, with other 
colonial decrees, repugnant to the terms of the charter. Simi- 
larly they opposed the rule that all marriages must be civil, and 
touched here a point close to the Puritan’s heart, since the ille- 
gality of ecclesiastical marriage was a cardinal point in the Con- 
gregational system. Here alone, perhaps, the English opinion 
worked not for tolerance, but attacked a main tenet of the 
Massachusetts church.®* The colonial agents were told that the 
royal decision as to boundaries must be final, that their state must 
sue for forgiveness of its offences, observe the laws of England, 
and repeal such of its own as conflicted with them. Finally, the 
religious test for the franchise was denounced. In answer, the 
agents resorted to quibbling by declaring that the right to vote 
was no longer related to church membership. It was a pitiful 
evasion. The statement, true in theory, was quite disproved in 
practice.° 

In the face of the English ruling, the General Court in Boston 
proved defiant. The Lords of Trade, constantly besieged by 
Randolph, were outraged, and with reason, at the flouting of 
royal orders. The Attorney General ruled that the violations of 
the charter justified its revocation, and the Lords of Trade urged 

66. R.N. Toppan, Edward Randolph, ii, 266, 276 ff. 

67. Cal. State Papers, Am. and W.1I.,x, 118ff.; J. T. Adams, The Founding, pp. 382, 
vee Religious History of New England, p. 24. 

69. J. T. Adams, The Founding, p. 384; Toppan, Edward Randolph, iu, 8, 44ff., 


47ft. 


1 PEAR elena et 


120 INCREASE MATHER 


bringing Quo Warranto proceedings against it. Randolph, in 
spite of the agents’ warm opposition, was made Collector of 
Customs for New England. Reluctantly the colonists made con- 
cessions here and there, but they clung fast to their idea of vir- 
tual independence.” 

The agents returned in 1679, bringing the King’s letter in 
regard to the franchise and increased toleration. Randolph met 
hostility on every side when he undertook his new duties,” and 
the colony, once more resorting to delay, waited several years 
before sending new agents to England to answer the King’s com- 
mands. This Fabian policy was opposed by Mather, who believed 
that delegates should be promptly chosen and sent to defend the 
colony in London.” None the less, even after John Richards and 
Samuel Nowell had been appointed 73 as messengers to the King, 
their sailing was postponed,.and they had not left Boston by the 
end of the year, when Randolph appeared fresh from renewed 
efforts in England on behalf of the 9u0 Warranto. With him he 
brought a new royal order.* This provided for more assistance 
for the Collector of Customs, demanded that the Navigation 
Acts be obeyed, and insisted once more that agents be sent. 
Early in the next year the General Court read this letter, and 
Richards and Dudley were chosen to go to England *—the one a 
radical in his desire to uphold the power of the colony, and the 
other a politician eager to turn the event of the moment toward 
the building of personal power.’”® As diplomats they were accept- 
able, for the most part, but the authority given them was insuf- 
ficient to make any action of theirs of use. Matters had gone too 


_ far for them to check. 


Controversy has been busy with every detail of these relations 
between New England and the mother country up to 1683. The 
proper interpretation of more than one fact in the record still 
offers ground for dispute. It seems safe, none the less, to believe 
that the issue was clearly drawn between England’s imperial 


70. Toppan, Edward Randolph, i, 124. Cf. in general, Palfrey, vol. iii. 

71. Toppan, Edward RandolpA, iii, 61. 

72. Diary, 1675-76 (page §1 of reprint, entry for October 17, 1680). 

73. Mass. Rec., v, 304, 307. For Randolph’s views as to Richards, cf. T. Hutchin- 
son, Collection, i1, 273. | For Nowell, cf. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, i, 335f. 

74. Toppan, Edward Randolph, iii, 110ff. 

75. Mass. Rec., v, 333; T. Hutchinson, History, i, 334; MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 
4off. 
76. For Dudley, see E. Kimball, The Public Life of Foseph Dudley. 


PUBLIC LIFE 121 


policy and New England’s zeal for autonomy. If only the leaders 
were busy on the colonial side, the fact remains that the mass of 
the people, if contrary-minded, did not express themselves, and 
one has only inference to guide as to their attitude. Many of 
them must have followed their magistrates and ministers in 
accepting the tradition that their commonwealth had been 
erected in the interests of one faith. Such men cannot have wel. 
comed the English plan to remodel their community into a British 
colony dominated by the Church of England, and bereft of its 
original theological tone. To them the brand of tolerance urged 
by England was not tolerance, but the direst intolerance in all 
that concerned their chosen frame for church and state. Current 
events led them to hope for little for their creed at the hands of a 
Stuart king.77 On the other hand, another class in the colony, 
more interested in trade than in worship, sought no more for 
Massachusetts than the government which, though soon to fail, 
then seemed to work well in England.7® A third group, perhaps, 
comprised the politically minded, who sought office rather than 
any one ideal of government. 

Broadly speaking, the larger towns were most inclined to tem- 
porize, for their interests were most cosmopolitan. The country 
districts and their representatives were less exposed to material 
influences, and clung more narrowly to their fathers’ beliefs.79 
Though we may grant that the party which favored submission 
to England aimed in the direction of the progress of later years, 
it is still unfair to forget that, to the Puritans, preservation of the 
old order meant not only New England’s independence and con- 
tinued power for the Congregational clergy, but also the main- 
tenance of what had come to seem to them the only way of life 
sanctioned by God. To desert it would have seemed falsehood 
to an ideal, and treachery to what they saw as the best interests 
of mankind. 

Mather’s stand on such questions is plain. The established | 
order in New England was to him an article of faith, inculcated _ 
by inheritance and training. Though he would amend the SyS- | 
tem here and there, by such means as the Half-Way Covenant, — 
and was never in his life a slave to authority but was often an 
advocate of what was newest and most progressive in thought, 

77. Cf. letters to Mather in MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, $10, 617, 618, 642. 


78. For the parties in Massachusetts, cf. Palfrey, iii, 359. 
79. Cf. J.T. Adams, The Founding, pp. 373, 374 


Sp REE 


122 INCREASE MATHER 


his belief in the validity of the essentials of the Congregational. 
Way was incapable of change. His intellectual curiosity led him 
more than once in advance of his contemporaries, but it was his 
weakness, if it be a weakness, to hold rooted convictions as 
to right and wrong. The church in which he had been nurtured 
was right, and for it no change or progress was needed or to be 
conceived of. To ask him to alter his view on this point would 
have been much as if one of us were asked toalter our rooted idea 
that two and two make four, in preference for some other theory 
hailed as newest and best. If one admits that this certainty as 
to the truth of their creed had a stifling effect upon the Puritans, 
one must also admit its large share in their achievement as 


colonizers. Without it could hardly have come the steadfast- 
_ ness of purpose that led them to brave a stormy sea and a bleak 


land. 

From 1675 to 1683, then, Mather was, at the very least, a 
deeply interested spectator of the political activities of the time. 
As we have seen, he longed for action, not delay. With John 
Richards, the representative of his views abroad, he had close 
relations. For him, he conducted at least one delicate negotiation 
with the Governor; and in Richards’s absence, his wife and chil- 
dren were confided to the care of the Teacher of the Second 
Church.*° 

But, however great Mather’s concern with public affairs, a 
variety of other interests helped to make up the rich activity of 
his life. At home his children were growing up. Cotton took his 
first degree at Harvard in 1678, and, three years later, received 
his A.M. from his father’s hands.** His loyalty to Increase began 
early, and he writes in 1681, “About this time I bought a Spanish 
Indian, and bestowed him for a Servant, on my Father.” Again, 
two years later, “I was owner of a Watch, whereof I was very. 
fond, for the Varietie of Motions in it. My Father was desirous 
of this Watch, and IJ, in a manner, gave it him, with such 
Thoughts, I owe him a great deal more than this.” In 1681 Cotton 
began to work as pastor of the Second Church, aiding his father 
there. “And I,” he writes, ““am herein a Colleague to a Father; 
yea, to a Father, given mee from the Dead, and one of my great- 
est Blessings.” Among his “causes for thanksgiving’”’ he lists 
“The Smiles of God, upon my Father’s Family ... But espe- 


80. MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 499, 500, 494. 
81. Ibid., Series 7, vii, 26; J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, iii, 7. 


PUBERIGILIBE Dae 


cially, the Life and Health of my dear Father, whom I may 
reckon among the richest of my Enjoyments.” ® 

The devoted Cotton was the oldest of nine children. The 
youngest, Catherine, was born in 1682 in the new house built for 
Mather at the corner of what are now Hanover and North Ben- 
nett Streets, near the Second Church, which had been rebuilt in 
North Square.*’ Hannah was born in this house on May 30, 1680, 
and Abigail, the next youngest, was born in April, 1677, during 
her father’s stay in Captain Bredon’s former home.* “Little 
doe children think, wt affection is in ye Heart of a Father,” 
Increase Mather wrote in his diary; ** and his son Nathaniel, 
fourteen years old in 1683, repaid his father’s love.* One after 
another the children fell sick and their father prayed beside their 
beds, deserting the study where he “could doe little... bec. of 
childrens sickness.” §? Only one of them died in childhood — 
little Catherine, who “dyed June 11: 1683.” 8 

We know that Mather tried “to be exemplary unto others... 
in the habite of his wife and children,” ®° and his care for them is 
reflected in page after page of his diary. There are prayers, too, 
lists of blessings for which he thanks God, and notes as to causes 
for humiliation. Again and again he deplores his sins, the “pub- 
lick state of things,” the “Troubles like to come on N. E. fro™ 
abroad,” and the “‘vnsuccessfullness of ’”’ his ““Labors.”’ “I doe 
but cumber ye ground,” he writes. He is grateful that “God 
hath given” him “esteem among his people” and has preserved 
his and his family’s health. He asks for more grace and “wis- 


dome to goe in & out bef his people, over whom Hee hath set me.” | 


He begs the Lord to “subdue ye Heathen,” keep Boston “fro™ 


ys Terrible disease of ye small pox... & sufffer] not ys disease 
to spread here.”’ °° He has premonitions, and records how in 1676 
he “was strongly possessed with fears that Boston would be 
punished with the judgment of fire.” Thus moved, he preached 
on the text “J said, surely thou wilt fear me, thou wilt receive 


82. MHS Coll., Series 7, vii, 20, 22, 36, 53, 63. 

83. Entries in Increase Mather’s Bible; E. G. Porter, Rambles, pp. 210ff.; Memorial 
History of Boston, i, 192 n.; MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 237. 

84. Entries in Increase Mather’s Bible. 

85. April 7, 1675. 

86. Cf. MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 19. 

87. Diary, April 9, 1675; and Idid., for 1675 and 1676, passim. 

88. Entry in Increase Mather’s Bible. 

89. MHS Coll., Series 4, vili, 574. 

g0. Diaries; Autobiography. 


124 INCREASE MATHER 


instruction; so their dwelling should not be cut off, howsoever I pun- 
ished them.” The fire followed hard upon this.” If such a chron- 
icle seems to us to reveal idle crediting of vague forebodings 
remembered only after the fact, to him they were precious hints 
that God might have been willing in some measure to make known 
His purposes to His servant upon earth.” 

Prayer and heartburnings could not suffice. There was work 
to do, and, lest he waste time, he drew up a plan for his days. 

“The first day of the week, besides my public labors, to attend 
catechising, and personal instruction in my family as time shall 
permit. 

“The second day of the week, a.m., to read a text with some 
commentator upon. To study part of a sermon. P.M. to read 
some author, & study. 

“Third day, a.m. Read context, study sermon. P.M. En- 
deavor to instruct personally some or other at home in the sum- 
mer time. Read authors. 

“Fourth day, read commentators, Study. pP.m., read authors; 
study. 

“Fifth day, Read commentators. Sermon. At lecture, to 
endeavor amongst ministers to promote what shall be for public 
advantage. 7 

“Sixth day, a.m. Read commentators; study. p.M. Read 
authors; study. 

“Seventh day. Read commentators. Prepare for Sabbath. 
“Only allowance must be given for visitations and diver- 
sions, and necessary avocations not foreseen.” % 

The last clause means most of all, for his activities were too 
many to be confined to any rigid scheme. His correspondence 
with friends at home and abroad, and his continued visits and 
visitors, make clear once more his eagerness for participation in 
the affairs of men.” 

g1. Autobiography; Parentator, p. 78. 

g2. On such premonitions, cf. B. Wendell, Cotton Mather, pp. 52, 53. 


93. Autobiography. The same material is in Parentator, p. 38. 
g4. Cf. letters in MHS Coll., Series 4, vol. viii. 


CHAPTER XI 


LITERARY LEADER AND SPOKESMAN OF 
THE PEOPLE 


if the years from 1675 to 1683 were filled with the excitement 
of political change, and for Mather marked by the eventful 
progress of his family and church, they still offered him time to 
exercise his scholarly bent. Learning was an integral part of his 
conception of his task, and reading and study filled many of his 
days. He bought books from England and from the counters of 
Boston booksellers on King’s Street or Prison Lane. The titles he 
chose forbid one’s picturing him as the narrow-minded preacher 
deaf to all but the echo of his own thoughts. If he received from 
his brother Nathaniel a treatise on the millennium, from John 
Davenport’s son his father’s vindication of Congregationalism, or 
from Richard Russell the very useful “Fulfilling of the Scripture,” 
by Robert Fleming; if he bought Dike’s “Worthy Communicant”’ 
and Perkins’s “Reformed Catholike,’ there were also books 
broader in subject, such as Horn’s “De Originibus Americanis,” 
another volume of Ramus, and, most interesting of all, Paul 
Pellison’s history of the French Academy.’ So also, when “the 
Honourable Mrs. Bridget Hoar made him to take what he 
Pleased from the Library of her Deceased Husband,” he chose 
books of no one type.? His selection included not only purely 
theological works, but general writings, such as Gesner’s “ Bib- 
liotheca,” ““Pembrook’s Arcadia,’ Cicero’s ‘‘Orations,’ two 
volumes on tobacco, and such scientific books as Parkinson’s 
“Garden Flowers” and “‘Theatre of Plants,’ Horstius’s Medical 
works, and Helmont’s ““Ortus Medicinae.”? And when Richard 
Chiswell sends him upon order thirteen books, we find that seven 
are on theology, but the rest are the “Discovery of Pigmies,” 
“ Horologicall Dialogues,” Barbette’s “Chirurgery,”’ Leybourne’s 


1. All these books from Mather’s library, with inscriptions dating them, are in the 
library of the American Antiquarian Society, except Horn, which is owned by the 
Massachusetts Historical Society. 

2. Cf. J. H. Tuttle, The Libraries of the Mathers, p. 291, and Parentator, p. 79. 


126 INCREASE MATHER 


“Dialling,” Hooke’s “Motion of the Earth,” the work of a 
pioneer in his field,’ and Stephenson’s “Mathemat. Compen- 
dium.” These books, one remembers, were Mather’s own choice, 
and ordered by him from London.4 Chiswell knew, too, that his 
correspondent was eager to keep in touch with the newest writ- 
ing, and added a few books of his own selection. Two of these 
were medical, two political, and two “best sellers” by Sir 
Matthew Hale, of which the bookseller wrote: “I know not any 
two books have come forth these 20 yeares, that have sold so 
great a number in so short a time.” § 

Another shipment from London “for Mr. Mather”’ is, perhaps, 
the most interesting of all. It was sent on September 5, 1683.° 
The sermons of his old friend, William Benn, of Dorchester, and 
Richard Baxter’s “How to Do Good to Many”’ may be classed 
as theology, but we find three copies of Chamberlayne’s “Com- 
pendium Geographicum”’ revealing broader interests. Medicine 
is represented by Samuel Haworth’s “The True Method of 
Curing Consumptions”; and a work called “Miracles no Viola- 
tions of the Laws of Nature” points forward to Mather’s “ Illus- 
trious Providences.” For history, or politics, we find “The 
Compleat States-man,” a life of Shaftesbury. There 1s also 
“The Woman’s Advocate, or Fifteen real Comforts of Matrimony 
. . . With Satyrical Reflections on Whoring, and the Debauchery 
of this Age. By a Person of Quality of the Female Sex’’; suggest- 
ing that human concerns were not foreign to one Boston reader! 
And as for two copies of “The London Jilt, or the Politick Whore; 
shewing all the artifices and stratagems which the Ladies of 
Pleasure make use of, for the intreaguing and decoying of men; 
interwoven with several pleasant stories of the Misses’ ingenious 
performances,” the least one can say is that these were not the 
adornment most to be expected on the shelves of a narrow- 
minded cleric. Undoubtedly the book was written by someone 
who, like Defoe, professed a zeal for moral edification; but quite 
as certainly his “pleasant stories’ were sometimes read by those 
with other motives. That Mather owned them shows, probably, 
that he was cognizant of a fact some teachers and divines have 
forgotten, and realized that to guide men into righteousness 


2 Ci DINE: 4. MHS Coll., Series 4, viti, 575-577. 

5. Ibid.; for Hale, see DNB. 

6. W. C. Ford, The Boston Book Market, pp. 114ff. The original list is owned by 
W. A. Jeffries, Esq., of Boston. 


LITERARY LEADER AND SPOKESMAN 17 


one must not be wholly ignorant of things of the world. To-day 
ministers read the reports of social workers as to the more sordid 
conditions of life; then a divine found similar material in “‘The 
London Jilt.” 

Mather bought books to read them, and in 1675-76 one finds 
him going through many varied pages. Cicero, Franzius’s “His- 
tory of Brutes,” several histories, Moxon “Of Globes,” Paget’s 
“Chronography,” and Purchas, are sandwiched in among trea- 
tises by learned divines. “‘The Life of Richard 3”’ appears, with 
no other identification; and even more alluring is the sound of 
the “Cabinet of Mirth.” 7 

In the face of this one cannot believe that there was in New 
England “for the average citizen” an “absence . . . of almost 
any books other than theological, and of any intellectual stimu- | 
lus other than the sermon.” § Admitting, of course, that Mather. 
was not “the average citizen,” and that the size of his library 
and breadth of his reading place him above his fellow towns- 
people, there is still abundant evidence that they, too, had access 
to literature of all sorts. Boston had a library, and so had 
Harvard. Boston booksellers’ lists of importations testify to 
the wide range of books, popular and learned, within reach of 
every passer-by.? Yet one reads: “Among the numerous con- 
temporary writers whom our educated colonists might have been 
reading had they been in England, we may mention, at hazard, 
Locke, Hobbes, Butler, Marvell, Sir Thomas Browne, Milton, 
Taylor, Izaak Walton, Bunyan, Fuller, Clarendon, Herbert, 
Dryden, and Herrick. . . . Of all this varied intellectual life, it 
may be said that practically nothing reached the vast majority 
of New Englanders.” *° Such a statement weakens in the face 
of the fact that of this list all save Hobbes, Walton, and Herrick 
can be shown certainly to have been known in colonial New Eng- 
land.* Marvell, Milton, Taylor, Fuller, and Herbert were in 
Mather’s library; * before his death at least one public library 
owned Locke and Clarendon; he quoted from Sir Thomas 


7.1. G. Wright, Literary Culture, pp. 130ff. Paget’s Chronography may have been 
Ephraim Pagit’s Christianographie, 1635, and often reprinted. Cf. W. T. Lowndes, 
Bibliographer’s Manual, i, 344, for the ‘“‘Cabinet of Mirth.” 

8. J. T. Adams, The Founding, p. 370. g. Wright, Literary Culture. 

10. Adams, The Founding, p. 371. 

11. I have searched no further than the lists given in Wright’s Literary Culture. 

12. J. H. Tuttle, The Libraries. 

13. Wright, Literary Culture, p. 185. 


128 INCREASE MATHER 


Browne," his son knew Butler,* Dryden was quoted by New 
Englanders,” and the booksellers in Boston sold Bunyan.” The 
“Pilorim’s Progress” was printed in Boston in 1681.%* If the 
scanty records preserved show thus much, one may be sure that 
other libraries unlisted and sales unrecorded would, if known, 
do their part to dispel the popular delusion that the Puritan was 
blind to all beyond his own door. The book trade in New England 
flourished, and English books were its support.?? Without readers 
this could not have been the case, and the Puritan need not fear 
comparison with his descendants. Like them, he had his own 
tastes. He preferred Herbert to Herrick, or Milton to Clarendon, 
just as some of us desert Ezra Pound for Masefield, or Wells for 
Bryce, without bringing discredit to our education. 

Mather’s reading, and the events among which he lived, find 
more than one reflection in what he wrote. In the front rank of 
the governors of the College, he sought supremacy elsewhere, 
and he knew how well leadership among New England writers 
would serve the personal prestige which was so important an 
asset in the prosecution of his work in church and town. Thus, 
from 1675 to 1683 the press turned out his books, year by year, 
histories, sermons, theology, and even a page or two of up-to-date 
science. 

He never forgot that the writing of New England history was 
a necessary task awaiting a willing hand. In 1677, he finished 
his “Relation of the Troubles which have hapned in New- 


i 


England, By reason of the Indians there: From the Year 1614 


to the Year 1675.”’?° His authorities are still recognized, except 
that modern historians envy him the sight of ‘‘a Manuscript 
Narrative of the Pequot War” from Davenport’s library (p. 45). 
He states clearly the theory on which he wrote. “I am not 
altogether ignorant of what is commonly and truly observed, 
viz. That those Histories which are partly Chronological are the 


14. Cf. I. Mather, Essay... Illustrious Providences, chap. 4. 

15. He refers to Hudibras in the Magnalia. 

16. Wright, Literary Culture, p. 150. 17.) Lbid.. Pa Tage 

18. S. A. Green, Ten Fac-simile Reproductions ... Various Subjects, pp. 13, 14. 

19. Wright, Literary Culture, especially chap. 7. 

20. The fulltitle was: “4 Relation Of the Troubles which have hapned in New-England, 
By reason of the Indians there: From the Year 1614. to the Year 1675. Wherein the 
frequent Conspiracyes of the Indians to cutt off the English, and the wonderfull provi- 
dence of God, in disappointing their devices, is declared... . By Increase Mather. ... 


Boston....1677.” It was reprinted by S. G. Drake as the “Early History of New — 


England,” Boston, 1864. All references in this book are to this edition. 


prone: 


LITERARY LEADER AND SPOKESMAN 129 


most profitable; and that they that undertake a Work of this 
Nature, should go by Prescript of that so much celebrated 
Verse, Quis, Quid, Vbi, Quibus auxiliis, Cur, Quomodo Quando. 
which I have endeavoured to remember” (pp. 46, 47). He recurs 
to his favorite literary doctrine, saying: “Nor hath that Maxim 
been wholly forgotten, Stylus Historicus quo simplicior eo melior. 
And J may expect that Ingenuous Readers will act according 
to that which a learned man in his Historica layeth down as 
a Theorem, Historici legantur cum moderatione et venia, h.e. 
cogitetur fieri non posse ut in omnibus circumstantiis sint Lyncet. 
I have done what I could to come at the Truth, and plainly to 
declare it, knowing that that is (as useth to be said) the Soul and 
Sun of History, whose Property is, Mévy 77 &dnbel & Ovelv” (p. 47). 
There are worse guides for the writing of history. 

For us the book has the value of a faithfully compiled story 
of events, with nothing in style or plan to mark it for special 
comment, after our glance at the chief features of his very similar 
history of King Philip’s War. The “Relation” suffers less from 
hasty composition than its predecessor, and the bony chronologi- 


cal structure is better veiled by more skilful transitions and more | 


closely knit narrative. Once more there is an eye for the dramatic 
and picturesque, and no pages are more readable than those 
given to anecdotes of various encounters between the English 
and the Indians. We read, “He...doth also Relate another 
Particular no less pleasant; namely, that whereas the Peguots 
observed, that the English, being willing to show as much Mercy 
as would stand with Justice, did only captivate and not kill the 
Squaws, some great Indian Boyes would cry, J Squaw, I Squaw, 
_ thereby to escape with their Lives” (pp. 183, 184). Writing in 
such a vein does violence to the conventional picture of the dour 
and nasal Puritan, but it is welcome, and one regrets that the 
next paragraph begins “But to be Serious —”’. 

The book closes on a note that sounds again and again in 
Mather’s work in these years — his faith that two sorts of men 
settled New England, “some that came hither on Account of 
Trade and worldly Interests, by whom the Indians have been 
scandalized,” and “others that came hither on a religious and 
conscientious Account, having in their Eye the Conversion of 
the Heathen unto Christ.” The former have met the Lord’s 
displeasure, while the latter have prospered. “This is the Lorad’s 
doing and it 1s marvellous in our Eyes” (pp. 238, 239). 


es 


130 INCREASE MATHER 


The book found readers, and favor enough to lead such friends 
as Samuel Whiting and Nathaniel Morton to write: “Let me beg 
one request of you, that you would set pen to paper in writing 
a History of New-England since the coming of our chief men 
thither... which I hope you may easily accomplish, having 
by your diligence and search found out so much history concern- 
ing the Pequot war,” or “I would propose vnto you... that 
you would please... to be Instrumentall to sett on foot and put 
forward a Generall History of New England.” 7* Time never 
offered for Mather himself to write such a book, but it is probable 
that he was “‘Instrumentall to sett” it “on foot,” for the first 
who achieved the task ‘“‘in a polite and scholar-like way” was 
his eldest son. 

There was more work for Mather’s pen in non-historical fields. 
From his sermons he prepared a series of little books, and between 
1675 and 1683 the list of his writings includes “The Times of Men 
are in the Hand of God,” “The Wicked Man’s Portion,” “Re- 
newal of Covenant the Great Duty,” “Pray for the Rising 
Generation,’ “‘A Discourse Concerning the Danger of Apos- 
tasy,”’ “Returning unto God,” “Heaven’s Alarm to the World,” 
“The Latter Sign,” “A Sermon Wherein is shewed that the 
Church of God is sometimes a Subject of Great Persecution,” 
and a series of “sundry sermons” under the title of “Practical 
Truths Tending to Promote the Power of Godliness.” Five of 
these books were printed more than once, two of them appearing 
in three impressions. 

Some elements are common to all of them. There is a style 
tuned to the needs of the pulpit, always Scriptural, almost always 
direct, and, at times, dramatic. There is constant care for em- 
phasis, and time and time again one finds the main theme re- 
peated like a refrain, or by position given unique force. In 
content there is everywhere harping upon the sins of the day, 
most of all upon New England’s falling away from the religious 
ideal of its founders. “The interest of New-England is now 
changed from a religious to a worldly interest; and in this thing 
is the great radical Apostacy of New-England.” * Reform is con- 
stantly urged. Mather’s readers are to express their zeal in 
renewing the old church covenants and in supporting the minis- 

21. ee England Historical and Genealogical Register, ii, 198; MHS Coll., Series 4, 
Vill : 
ane Mather, Call from Heaven, 1685 ed., p. 89. 


LITERARY LEADER AND SPOKESMAN Et 


try, and, most of all, they are to seek God through prayer. But 
to save themselves would not be to save New England for all 
time. In her youth, her “rising generation,” lay her hope. 
~ Mather saw the strategic place to battle for the life of the old’ 
faith, and in sermon after sermon he reverts to insistent pleas 
for sound education of children, and the gift to them of the. 
blessing of a disciplined and Christian home. i 

These strains run through all the writing of these years, but 
there is no one of Mather’s volumes without some paragraph or 
two of interest in and for itself. “The Times of Men,” completed 
early in 1674, is built about the idea that “‘it becometh us, not to 
censure those that are made Examples of divine Severity; and yet 
with Humility and an Holy Fear to take notice of the solemn works 
of God.” > With all its stress upon the swift judgment of God, 
for reasons sometimes beyond human ken, the book is not cheer- 
less, for if life and death and all human concerns are in God’s 
hands, “they are in the best hands that possibly can be” (p. 12). 
There burns the faith that triumphs over the sternest articles 
of the Puritan creed. 

Fither the ‘Times of Men” or the “Wicked Man’s Portion” 
seems to have been the first book printed in Boston.” The latter, 
a sermon preached on the occasion of the execution of two men 
“who had murthered their master,” *5 is marked by directness of 
utterance, pointed by examples of the punishment of the wicked, 
and dignified by its resistance of the obvious temptation to sen- 
sationalism offered by its theme. Most striking of all, is its 
address to the murderers, with its picture of Christ’s place as the 
great Redeemer. ‘And know, that Jesus Christ the Son of God, 
Came to Save the chief of sinners. There is Merit and Righteous- 
ness enough in Jesus Christ. Hee was bruised for our Iniquityes, 
and wounded for our Transgressions. The wounds of Christ can 

23. The Preface is dated 9 of 4** Moneth, 1675. The quotation is from the 
Preface. The full title is: “The Times of men are in the hand of God. or A Sermon 
Occasioned by that awfull Providence which hapned in Boston in New-England, the 4 
day of the 3 Moneth 1675. (when part of a Vessel was blown up in the Harbour, and 
nine men hurt, and three mortally wounded) wherein is shewed how we should 
sanctifie the dreadfull Name of God under such awfull Dispensations. By Increase 
Mather, Teacher of a Church of Christ.... Boston, Printed by Yohn Foster 1675.” 

24. R. F. Roden, The Cambridge Press, p. 139. 

25. The full title is: ““The Wicked Mans Portion or A Sermon (Preached at the 
Lecture in Boston in New-England the 18th day of the 1 Moneth 1674. when two men 
were executed, who had murthered their Master). Wherein is shewed That excesse in 


wickedness doth bring untimely Death. By Increase Mather, Teacher of a Church of 
Christ... . Boston, Printed by Yohn Foster. 1675.” 


132 INCREASE MATHER 


make amends for those wounds which you gave your Master, 
when you slew him. The Blood of Christ can satisfie for the blood 
which you have shed. Jesus doth deliver from the wrath to come. 
And he doth not exclude you from salvation by him, if you doe 
not by Impenitency & Unbelief exclude your selves. Neither can 
the death you suffer hinder the Salvation of your souls, in case 
you truly repent and believe. Yea Hee (the blessed Son of God) 
was hanged upon a Tree, though Hee never knew any sin, only for 
the sins of his people, and therefore he hath sanctified all maner 
of deaths unto those that shall beleive on Him. Oh Consider 
of it and let it break your Hearts” (p. 23). 

In the first of these two sermons Mather wrote: “Possibly 
some may wonder, that I should so frequently appear in this 
way, who am the least amongst my Brethren; and also one that 
hath his Head and Hands and Heart, otherwise full of thoughts 
and Labours. The Truth is (although I should not be weary in 
well doing, yet such is mine infirmity as that) Lam weary. And 
if the Lord give me to finish two small Treatises, which I have 
aupon the Anvill, (and which I doe confess my Heart is much 
upon) ... I doe not Purpose (although I should live much longer | 
then I think I shall) to be any more troublesome in this way.” *° 
Yet his pen did not flag, and in 1677, because of the “concurrent 
desires” 27 of the Dorchester church, he published the sermon 
he had preached to them on what he saw as the great need of the 
day, the ‘“Renewal-of Covenant.” ** 

Mather felt that there was no better way to restore the zeal of 
the first enthusiastic years in Massachusetts, than to reafirm 
publicly one’s religious purpose and faith, and his Dorchester 
sermon, now printed, expresses this idea. The book contains an 
interesting passage on the use of the Bible. “Others have ob- 
jected, that we find nothing in the New-Testament concerning a 
Church Covenant. And suppose it were so indeed, Is the old 
Testament Apocrypha in these dayes?” Such a statement is 
hardly intelligible if, as we are urged to believe, the Old Testa- 
ment was the Puritans’ avowed favorite. Much is explained in 
the comment, “Its a solid Notion, that things abundantly 

26. I. Mather, The Times of Men, Preface. 

27. I. Mather, Renewal of Covenant, Preface. 

28. The full title is: ‘Renewal of Covenant the great Duty incumbent on decaying or 
distressed Churches. A Sermon Concerning Renewing of Covenant with God in Christ, 


Preached at Dorchester in New-England, the 21. Day of the 1. Moneth 1677. being a 
Day of Humiliation There, on that Occasion.” Boston, 1677. 


LITERARY LEADER AND SPOKESMAN BR 


insisted on in the Old Testament, and matters about which there 
was no occasion for controversie in the Apostles time, are spar- 
ingly mentioned in the New Testament.” ”9 

‘Pray for the Rising Generation”’ 5° carries in its title sufficient 
clue to its contents. The diction is heavy, and perhaps over- 
loaded with Scripture, but the argument for the efficacy of prayer, 
its necessity for children, and the need of good examples for 
them, is none the less plain. 


/Mather’s election sermon for 1677,\ preached before the , 
“general Assembly,” was printed in 1679.3" One or two para- 


graphs make clear points of the gravest import to all who would 
read the Puritan aright. Mather turns to the deputies and 
magistrates, and exhorts them to enforce the laws, to check the 
disturbances common on Saturday nights (a modern note!), and 
to urge the renewal of covenants. The need of New England is 
for discipline in homes and churches, and for the calling of worthy 
men to office. “Let it be your Care, that none but faithful ones 


. .. beemployed as Publick Preachers”’ (p. 103).3?” Toleration is a 


danger. “Truly sinful Toleration was Solomon’s great Iniquity, 
whereby he did forsake the Lord” (p. 104). “Do we not find 
that all the godly reforming Magistrates, spoken of in Scripture, 
thought it their Concern to pull down false worship, as well as 
to set up the true Worship of God?” “Sinful Toleration is an 
evil of exceeding dangerous consequence” (p. 105). One reads, 
and at once the grim figure of the conventional Puritan, fabri- 
cated from conjectures of a later day, seems to gain reality. But 
before we add Mather to those who would put Quakers to death 
for their opinions, we may well pause to read “Yet it is far from 


29. Preface. 

30. The full title is: “Pray for the Rising Generation, or a Sermon Wherein Godly 
Parents are Encouraged, to Pray and Believe for their Children, Preached the third 
Day of the fifth Month, 1678. which Day was set apart by the second Church in Boston 
in New-England, humbly to seek unto God by Fasting and Prayer, for a Spirit of Con- 
verting Grace, to be poured out upon the Children, and Rising Generation in New- 
England” (Cambridge, 1678). A second impression was printed in Boston in 1679, and 
bound with “A Call from Heaven.” A third impression appeared in the 1685 edition 
of the last-named book. All references here are to the 1685 edition. 

31. The title is: ““4 Discourse Concerning the Danger of Apostasy, Especially as to 
those that are the Children and Posterity of such as have been eminent for God in their 
Generation. Delivered in a Sermon, preached in the Audience of the general Assembly 
of the Massachusets Colony at Boston in New-England, May 23. 1677. being the day of 
Election there.” This was printed with the ‘‘Call from Heaven” in both editions of 
that book. 

32. The references are to the edition of 1685, 


“ 
ee 


134 INCREASE MATHER 


-my design in speaking this to stir up Magistrates to that which 


es 


the Scripture calls Persecution: it were better to err by too much 


indulgence towards those that have the root of the matter in them, 
than by too much Severity. Nay, as to those that are indeed 
Heretical, I can for my own part say with Luther, ad judicium 


_ sanguinis tardus sum, { have no affection to sanguinary punish- 


ments in such Cases. And certainly there are other wayes to 


‘suppress Hereticks besides Hereticide”’ (pp. 107, 108). 


Driven from one position, our Puritan-baiting tendencies find 
refuge in the thought that, at least, we have here the Puritan 
minister attempting to control not only the church but the state, 
in contradiction to the Congregational theory which kept the two 
apart, and in violation of all principles save those of dogmatic 
tyranny. But Mather once more cuts the ground from beneath 


our feet. His function is to preach, to state the case of religion, 
- not to dictate or control. “For a Minister of Christ to be a Mer- 
chant and entangle himself with the Affairs of this life, against 


the express charge of y* Holy Ghost; or for them to be Gospel 
Lawyers, to handle the Code instead of the Bible, and study the 
Statutes of the Land instead of the Statutes of Heaven; for them 
to appear as Advocates, and plead Causes in civil Courts of 
Judicature, it is very uncomely” (p. 120). Nor may the magis- 
trates control the church. ‘“‘There is indeed one particular in- 
sisted on, which is now become a matter of Scruple and distast to 
some amongst us, vz. that which concerns the Magistrates power 
in matters of Religion. But as it was by me either intended or 
expressed, I know not to this hour why any one should be 
offended atit. I may better speak in this cause than some others, 
as having my self had experience what it 1s to have Conscience 
imposed on, and therefore would be loth that any truly conscien- 
tious should be burdened; and it is sufficiently known that I 
have a greater latitude and /ndu/lgence in the point of Toleration, 
than many better than myself have. Nevertheless, I judge it 
most unreasonable that pretended Liberty of Conscience, should 
be an 4sy/um for the profanest errors to take Sanctuary in: As 
though men must therefore have Liberty to Profane Sabbaths or 
Sacraments.” 33 Here speaks Mather’s dominant belief that 
where right and wrong, as the Puritan saw them, were con- 
cerned, there could be no question of tolerance. His vigorous 
confidence as to this, and more than a hint of the force of his 


33. Preface. 


LITERARY LEADER AND SPOKESMAN ERS 


character, stand out in his “What I have to say, if it were in a 
Church full of Kings, I would speak it.” 

Both the sermons last considered were printed more than once. 
“Pray for the Rising Generation” appeared by itself, and then as 
a part of two editions of a small volume made up of a group of 
sermons, all directed to New England youth. Both impressions 
contained also ““The Danger of Apostasy.”” The whole volume 
bore the name “‘A Call from Heaven to the Present and Succeed- 
ing Generations,” * and it contains two sermons we have not 
yet seen. 

The first, on 1 Chronicles, 28:9, is an appeal to parents to 
bring up their children in true religion. There is a strangely 
archaic note for us in its assertion that election to salvation 
tends to follow family lines. But, if it be undemocratic and 
out of date to believe that godly parents are most likely to 
have offspring whom God will number among His chosen, there 
are redeeming pages. One reads: “‘If Parents truly fear God, 
their children shall fare the better for it; Yea, let me tell you, 
that then if any of them dye in their Infancyes, you need not 
doubt of their Salvation” (p. 20). What has become of the 
unhappy children in “The Day of Doom,” * tortured eternally 
by the chance of an early death? What becomes of modern 
critics of the seventeenth century, who love to quote Wiggles- 
worth’s grim verses, as typical of his creed? Perhaps Mather 
had progressed beyond his old college tutor. Certainly he 
makes clear what cannot be repeated too often — that, con- 
servative though he may have been, it was not the past for the 
sake of the past, that he upheld. ‘The Wise Man,” he remarks, 
“doth justly condemn the folly of those, that are alwayes saying 
and complaining, what is the cause that the former dayes were better 
then these? ... there is in men an aptness to Morose Repinings, 
like the Poets old Man, Laudator temporis acti, se puero; which is 
not from wisdome; such complaints often proceeding from igno- 


34. The full title is: “4 Call from Heaven To the Present and Succeeding Genera- 
tions. Or A Discourse Wherin is shewed, I. That the Children of Godly Parents are 
under special Advantages and Encouragements to seek the Lord. II. The exceeding 
danger of Apostasie, especially as to those that are the Children and Posterity of such 
as have been eminent for God in their Generation. HI. That Young Men ought to 
Remember God their Creator.” Boston, 1679. There was a second edition, Boston, 
1685, to which all references here are made. 


pcaci. MC. Lyler Aistory, i, 31,)32- 


136 INCREASE MATHER 


rance in History, or non observation of the vices of those of 
former, and virtues in some of the present generation,” * 

The other sermon in the same volume, still unconsidered, was 
addressed especially to the young men of New England. It does 
not spare its allusions to hell-fire. Yet the climax returns to 
the heart of all Christianity, the love of Christ. “Look unto Fesus 
Christ. O betake your selves to him. ... Goe to him by Prayer, 
and to God by him. Some of you, when you are asked that 
Question, do you pray, Answer, I cannot pray. You would do it, 
you say, but you know not how to pray. Why, get into a secret 
place, and there lift up thine Eyes and heart to the Lord Jesus, 
and if thou can’st say nothing else, yet say, O thou Son of God 
have mercy on me! O convert me, and save my poor Soul! who 
knoweth but the Lord from on high, may look upon thee, since 
the Lord Jesus himself hath said, They that seek me early shall 
find me” (p. 114). 

On March 17, 1679-80, the Second Church renewed their 
covenant, and Mather preached to them on “Returning unto 
* God.” 37 There is nothing to detain us in this sermon, printed a 
few months later; and the next of his public discourses to find 
its way into print is concerned less with his activities as preacher 
and writer than with his interest in matters of science. We may 
leave it—with “The Latter Sign,” still another sermon, published 
in 1682— for the present, and turn to “A Sermon Wherein 1s 
shewed that the Church of God is sometimes a Subject of Great 
Persecution.” 38 From France came news of the Protestants’ 
sufferings under Louis XIV, and Mather hastened to remind his 
people that they, too, had cause to fear. Sins they had, and 
Satan was strong. God might well send persecution to chasten 
them. They had quarrelled foolishly among themselves. “Have 
not we been like foolish little Birds, Pecking at one another, 
until the great Kite be ready to come, and devour one as well as 
“another?” (pp. 19, 20.) Faith once more conquers fear. “If per- 


36. I. Mather, Cal/ from Heaven, Preface. 

37. The full title is: ‘Returning unto God the great concernment of a Covenant People. 
Or A Sermon Preached to the second Church in Boston in New-England, March 17. 16,9" 
when that Church did solemnly and explicitly Renew their Covenant with God, and one 
with another.’ Boston, 1680. 

38. The full title is: ““A Sermon Wherein is shewed that the Church of God is some- 
times a Subject of Great Persecution; Preached on a Publick Fast At Boston in New- 
England: Occasioned by the Tidings of a great Persecution Raised against the Protes- 
tants in France.” Boston, 1682. 


alten el 


LITERARY LEADER AND SPOKESMAN 137 


secution do come, the event of it will, by the overruling Hand of 
divine providence, be good”’ (p. 22). Terror is not necessary, but 
rather “Labour for Syncerity” and thankfulness to God. Re- 
membering what was to come, there is a hint of unconscious 
irony in the words “Never any people in the world, had greater 
cause of Thankfulness unto God, than we have had. In respect 
of our Civil Libertyes; wherein we have been admirably privi- 
ledged; and which God has to a wonderment, continued to us” 
(p. 23). 

His last published sermons before 1684, included in a little book 
of “Practical Truths,” are, perhaps, the most readable of all.39 
They are based primarily on the New Testament, and though 
such titles as “Sleeping at Sermons is a Great and a Dangerous 
Fvil,” and “It is the Property of a Sincere Godly Man Not to 
Sit with Vain Persons,” are, if one will, characteristically Puri- 
tanical, the greater part of the book deals with the essentials 
of Christianity in all ages, prayer, personal consecration, and 
communion with the church. The charm — and charm is not an 
inept word, if one will but take pains to read the book — lies 
most of all in the writer’s enthusiasm, in his faith and his devotion 
to his readers. He is eager that they share with him the spiritual 
absorption that gave meaning to his life. To them, his “Most 
Dearly Beloved,” he writes: ““And if I (who, you will all say, 
have not been wont to flatter you) take notice of some vertues, 
wherein the Lord hath caused you to excel, and shine as lights 
unto others, J trust J shall therein, follow the holy Example of 
the Lord Jesus Christ, who doth not only reprove the failings, 
but take notice of the Graces in His Churches, before all the 
world.” 4° Where is the “grim” Puritan, and his ideal of a stern 
and tyrannical God? 

Mather’s book was printed at the expense of certain members 
of the Second Church.4* It was well adapted for its readers. 
Their queries are answered, as, for example, when the common 
objections to prayer, still heard, — ‘‘I have n’t time,” “I am 
ashamed,’ — are put to rest. And even in the least “‘modern’ 
of all the sermons, the argument against sleeping at sermons, 

39. The full title is: “‘Practical Truths Tending to Promote the Power of Godliness: 
Wherein Several Important Duties, are Urged, and the Evil of divers common Sins, is 
Evinced; Delivered in Sundry Sermons.” Boston, 1682. 

40. Preface. One wonders why John Higginson thought the book would have been 


more useful without the preface. Cf. MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 282. 
41. Preface. 


> 2 


138 INCREASE MATHER 


theoretical objections are supported by eminently practical 
suggestions as to how to keep awake! 

The book, of course, 1s written with an eye on the man in the 
street. So, perhaps, were the histories; but there is a third class 
of Mather’s writings, more limited in range, more scholarly in 
tone, and designed for those to whom theological problems and 
doctrines were of deep concern. Such was the “Discourse on 
Baptism,” # following hard upon “The First Principles of New 
England.” Its defence of the Half-Way Covenant is not argu- 
ment for argument’s sake, or talking for victory, but a plea made 
persuasive by moderate utterance. Mather tried to avoid “such 
bitter invectives against Dissenters, as Polemical writings are 
many times full of.”’ # He says, “These things should make us 
wise & moderate in our notions,” for “‘they that have a righteous 
Cause are wont to be... zealous for the Truth? (pa7qjme 
shall finish with the Words of that famous African Synod fourteen 
hundred years agoe, being come to the Conclusion, of the Con- 
troversie then under debate, concerning the Subject and time of 
Baptisme they yet say, Neminem Iudicamus si diversum in hac 
re senserit, we Censure no man, albeit as to this Question, he be 
not altogether of our Judgement”’ (p. 76). 

Mather returned again to the controversy on baptism in his 
“Divine Right of Baptism” “*— this time an argument against 
the Baptists on the ground that they would deprive children of 
their right to be placed in infancy under the protection of the 
Church. The “Anabaptists” had given trouble in New England. 
They had installed as minister a man excommunicated from the 
Congregational church, and, when their meeting-house was 
closed to them, they persisted in assembling publicly before its 
barred doors rather than worship unmolested in a private house.‘s 
To Mather these were attacks upon the true faith, and manifest 
disturbances of the civil peace. Naturally there is some acidity 
in his strictures on the “blasted Error” of “Antipedobaptism” 
(p. 20). Against it he urged even “the light of nature.” He 


42. The full title is: ““A Discourse Concerning the Subject of Baptisme Wherein the 
present Controversies, that are agitated in the New English Churches are from Scripture 
and Reason modestly enquired into.” Cambridge, 1675. 

43. Preface. 

44. The full title is: “The Divine Right of Infant-Baptisme Asserted and Proved from 
Scripture and Antiquity.” Boston, 1680. 

45. MHS Proc., xxiii, 399ff., entry for March 13, 1679-80, and Memorial History 
of Boston, 1, 195, n. 3. 


re = 


a 


LITERARY LEADER AND SPOKESMAN 139 


denounces Baptists roundly enough, points to their kindred with 
the turbulent Anabaptists in Europe, and writes: “Are they 
not generally of a bad Spirit? Bitter enemies to the Lords most 
eminent Servants? yea, to his faithful Ambassadors, spitting the 
cruel venome of Asps against them.” There is cogency in his 


“To snarle at the Shepherds is no sign of a sheep” (p. 21). Yet 


there is relief from intolerant gloom in such lines as “I do not. 


... Judge simple Antipedobaptists as Hereticks. I have known of 
that way not only in New England, but in England and in Ireland, 
that I believe were sincerely Conscientious” (p. 20); and ““My 
design in writing these things, is not to stigmatize all that through 
weakness of Conscience scruple Infant Baptism; some of which, 
their error notwithstanding, [I] could imbrace with both arms, 
for I believe God hath received them” (pp. 24, 25). President 
Oakes, introducing the book, writes: “It is sufficiently known to 
those that know the Author, that he is none of the Ishmaels of 
the times, that have their hand against every man, and love 
to be taking a Dog by the Ears... or to be dabling in the waters 
of strife.... They that know his Doctrine and manner of life, 
cannot but know that the life of his Spirit is in the things of prac- 
tical Divinity, and the great Design of his Ministry is to pro- 
mote the power and practice of piety in the greatest instances 
... dare undertake... his design... is not to traduce ... those 
that are otherwise minded, or expose them to severities & suffer- 
ings on the bare account of their opinion.” 4 Nor is the modern 
reader likely to disagree. 

Out of the war grew Mather’s “Earnest Exhortation,” 47 full 
of warnings to his people. Quarrels, profiteering, and excessive 
demands of labor are things to be banned. The Indians are to 
be converted, not harried and oppressed. Once more there is no 
sign of the conventional Puritan of outworn interests and zeal 
for deeds of blood. 

As the “Earnest Exhortation”’ was coupled with one of his 
histories, so to the other he joined “An Historical Discourse 
Concerning the Prevalency of Prayer.” 48 This was written to 

46. Preface. 

47. The full title is: “An Earnest Exhortation To the Inhabitants of New-England, 
To hearken to the voice of God in his late and present Dispensations As ever they desire 
to escape another Judgement, seven times greater then any thing which as yet hath 
been.” Boston, 1676. The book was bound with the first Boston edition of Mather’s 


“Brief History of the War,” separately paged. 
48. The full title is: “4” Historical Discourse Concerning the Prevalency of Prayer. 


a 


I40 INCREASE MATHER 


prove “that New-Englands Late Deliverance from the Rage of 
the Heathen is an Eminent Answer to Prayer.” This Mather 
did by collecting instances of signal mercies shown to men in 
answer to their pleas to God. Whatever our judgment may be 
as to the witnesses he relied on, they were of authority in his time, 
at least, nor may we forget that it is possible sometimes to be 
sceptical as to the evidence used in some modern treatises of the 
power of prayer. — 

_ But sinful Massachusetts did not limit Mather’s pen.; In 1682 a 
little volume of his saw the light in Amsterdam. Written in 
Latin, its title was “‘Diatriba de Signo Filii Hominis, et de 
Secundo Messiae Adventu; ubi de modo futurae Judaeorum 
Conversionis; Nec non de signis Novissimi diei, disseritur’’— a 
sufficient index of its content.42Obviously it is a book for 
theological scholars, a New Englander’s effort to take his place 
in the larger world of religious learning. For us, the fact that the 
book was published in Holland, and that he hoped for its success, 

: 2 s 3 ce ) S ce 

praying characteristically that God might “‘owne” his “labors in 
writing that work,” 5° is, perhaps, its greatest claim to interest. 
There were here seeds for a reputation not confined to Boston, 
and in the tale of Mather’s later years, their full flowering finds 
proof. 

Historian, preacher, and scholarly writer, Mather was emi- 
nently equipped to lend useful support to any book to be sold in 
Boston. Accordingly we find him more than once signing the 
prefaces to works by other hands. A second edition of his brother 
Eleazar’s “Serious Exhortation”’ contained a new preface by 
Increase Mather.** He performed the same office for James 
Fitch’s ‘“The First Principles of the Doctrine of Christ,” arguing 
for the writing and use of catechisms.% Samuel Torrey also 
Wherein is shown that New-Englands Late Deliverance from the Rage of the Heathen 
is an Eminent Answer to Prayer.” Boston, 1677. A reprint is in S. G. Drake, Early 
History of New England, p. 241. 

49. “Diatriba de Signo Filii Hominis, et de Secundo Messie Adventu; Udi de modo 
futurae Fudeorum Conversionis; Nec non de signis Novissimi diei, disseritur.” Amstelo- 
dami, 1682. 

so. MS. Diary, 1680-84, June 22, 1682. 

s1. The full title is: ‘A Serious Exhortation to the Present and Succeeding Genera- 
tion in New-England, Earnestly calling upon all to endeavour that the Lord’s Gracious 
Presence may be continued with Posterity. Being the substance of the Last Sermons 
preached By Mr. Eleazer Mather... The second Edition.” Boston, 1678. 

$2. The title is: “The first Pinciples [sic] of the Doctrine of Christ....”’ Boston, 


1679. Mather’s preface is dated 4.m. 23.d. 1679. Fitch was minister in Norwich, Con- 
necticut. 


LITERARY LEADER AND SPOKESMAN 141 


turned to him, for an introduction to the “Plea for the Life of 
Dying Religion”’;%* and after Oakes’s death, “New Englands 
Samuel,” a “Seasonable Discourse,’ found among his lecture 
notes, was given to the press by Mather, who added a preface of 
his own. His “Nor is there anything more offensive to the Lord 
Tesus then luke-warmnesse in profession, or having a Name to 
live, and being dead,” reveals much. There is more than a hint 
of his understanding of his times, in the question, ““Are not some 
weary of that Theocracy, or Government which God hath estab- 
lished amongst us, as to sacred, and civill respects, willing for 
a change in both?” 

For Samuel Willard he wrote two prefaces. The first, for 
“Covenant-Keeping, The Way to Blessedness,” ** has nothing to 
mark it for special attention, but the second gives a valuable 
glimpse at Mather’s views on current affairs. Willard, although 
Randolph believed him to be inclined to tolerance,** had no love 
for Anabaptists, and in his ““Ne Sutor Ultra Crepidam”’ 57 an- 
swers what he dubbed their ‘Late Fallacious Narrative.” 5° 
Mather’s preface sums up his views on toleration, sketched else- 
where, and puts so plainly the Puritan side of the controversy in 
regard to persecution of other sects, that much of it deserves 


quoting. ‘Certain Complainants,” he writes, “say they under- 


stand that the present Honourable Governour of this Colony, 
had threatned this poor people... with death: which report of 
theirs, is like too many particulars in their vindication, an uéter 
mistake. ... The Governour... hath sometimes moved, that an 
old severe Law made against those that should manifest any 
publick contempt of that ordinance of Infant Baptisme, might be 
lenifyed.”” As to persecution for opinions we read: “I have been 
a poor labourer in the Lords Vineyard in this place upwards of 


53. The title is: “A Plea For the Life of Dying Religion from the Word of the Lord.” 
Boston, 1683. 

54. The full title is: “df Seasonable Discourse Wherein Sincerity & Delight in the 
Service of God is earnestly pressed upon Professors of Religion.” Cambridge, 1682. 

55. Boston, 1682. Mather’s preface is dated November 15, 1682. 

conker: Toppan, Edward Randolph, iii, 148. 

57. The full title is: “Ne Sutor ultra Crepidam. ” Or Brief Animadversions Upon the 
New-England Anabaptists Late Fallacious Narrative; Wherein the Notorious Mistakes 
and Falshoods by them Published, are Detected.” Boston, 1681. 

The sub-title of this book has sometimes been listed as a work by Increase Mather. 
This is probably due to a confusion of the sub-title with the knowledge that Mather 
wrote the preface for it. No copy of a book by Mather with such a title has been 
found, so far as I know. 


58. This was a book by John Russell, a Baptist. 


142 INCREASE MATHER 


twenty years: and it is more than I know, if in all that time, any 
of those that scruple Infant-Baptisme, have met with molesta- 
tion from the Magistrate meerly on the account of their Opinion.” 
On tolerance in general: “It is evident, that that Toleration 
is in one place, not only lawful, but a necessary duty, which in 
another place would be destructive; and the expectation of it 
irrational. That which is needful to ballast a great ship, will sink 
a small boat. If a considerable number of Antipedobaptists 
should (as our Fathers here did) obtain Liberty from the State, 
to transport themselves and families, into a wast American 
wilderness, that so they might be a peculiar People by them- 
selves...if now Pedo-Baptists should come after them, and 
intrude themselves upon them, and when they cast men out of 
their society for moral Scandals, entertain them: Surely they 
would desire such persons; either to walk orderly with them, 
or to return to the place from whence they came. And if they 
would do neither, they would think that such Pedo-Baptists 
were blame-worthy: let them do as they would be done by; and 
deal by us, as they would have us to deal by them; were they in 
our case, and we in theirs.” As to the treatment of New England 
Baptists, “those of their perswasion in this place, have acted 
with so much irregularity and prophaneness, that should men 
of any other perswasion whatsoever, have done the like, the 
same severity would have been used towards them. .. . They say 
those of the Congregational way in England, plead for Ana- 
baptists liberty as for their own....When I was in England, I 
did so myself; and if I were their now, I would do so again: 
but that they should plead for liberty unto such practises, as our 
Anabaptists have been guilty of is not easie to believe.” Here is 
argument from fact, not theory, and a view determined not by 
abstract ideas but by conditions of time and place. The last few 
pages sum up the Puritans’ view so that he who runs may read. 
“Finally, let me intreat the Brethren to believe, that some of us 
would shew as much indulgence unto truly tender Consciences, 
as themselves. It is not so long since our own Necks bled under 
an intolerable yoke of Imposition upon Conscience; as that we 
should forget what it is to be so dealt with; or exercise that 
severity towards any, that we have ourselves complained of, in 
others.” Tolerance is the ideal, but in practice there are prob- 
lems. “But the Brethren will readily own, that some men have 
pretended Conscience, when pride & perverseness in the will, have 


— > 


LITERARY LEADER AND SPOKESMAN 143 


been at the bottom: They will also confess, that a meer pretence 
of Conscience, is not enough to bear men out in an evil practice. 
All the difficulty is, in discerning the one of these from the other. 

. If men will call unjustifiable Practices by the name of their 
Opinion; and when their evils are born witness against, make out 
cries, that they suffer for their Opinion, and for their Conscience: 
How is it possible, for those to help them, who desire to keep 
their own Consciences pure, and without offence towards God, 
by being faithful according to that capacity the Lord hath set 
them in?”” When we can answer such a question adequately, we 
may fairly attack the Puritan view. Until we can, and it is not 
easy, we may grant that those whose case Mather stated, for 
their day and according to their lights, acted not quite without 
reason.°? 

A last group of books brings us to a new and less known side 
of Mather’s thought. In England, science was developing fast.%° 
In New England, though it be true that Puritanism offered poor 
soil, some seeds of the new investigating spirit took root. One 
remembers that the younger John Winthrop corresponded with, 
and became a member of, the Royal Society,™ but it 1s less often 
recalled that he was not alone among New Englanders in his 
scientific bent. Least of all do we bear in mind that Increase 
Mather, ardent divine as he was, was.a pioneer in stimulating ” 
scientific research. In 1681 he published a sermon “Heaven’s 
Alarm to the World.” * At first sight this 1s as radical an example 
as could be wished for, of the theological as opposed to the scien- 
tific view. He wrote frankly, “Concerning those admirable; and 
amazing works of God, which are by us called Comets, as under a 
Physical and Mathematical Consideration, there are many that 
have published their Sentiments, and some to good purpose and 
edification. The scope of the ensuing discourse is only (that 
being proper for one under my circumstances) to make a T’heo- 

59. Some interesting sidelights on the opinion of Mather’s contemporaries as to his 
preface to Willard’s book, and as to toleration in general, are found in the letters printed 
in the MHS Coil., Series 4, viii. Simon Bradstreet, Harvard 1660, writes from London 
in 1681, saying that Mather might well have gone further in his attack on the Baptists 
(p. a7?) He referred to “‘that cursed Bratt Toleration” (p. 478). 

60. Cf., for example, H. D. Traill and J. S. Mann, Social England, iv, 553. 
orerCr: DNB, and T. G. Wright, Literary Culture, passim. 

62. The full title is: ‘Heavens Alarm to the World. Or A Sermon Wherein is Shewed, 
That fearful Sights and Signs in Heaven are the Presages of great Calamities at hand.” 


Boston, 1681. There were two impressions of this work, the second being Boston, 1682. 
It was also printed in the Kometographia. 


144 INCREASE MATHER 


logical Improvement thereof.” ® He then urges that, in accord- 
ance with traditional belief as to comets, the “blazing star” of 
1680 may well be regarded as a warning to New England. Two 
years later, in “The Latter Sign,” ® a sermon on the comet of 
1682, he returns to the same view, but it is striking to note that 
the new astronomy has left its mark. He begins to realize the 
possibility that comets may not be prodigies revealing God’s 
anger, but normal products of natural law. Even so the lesson 
is not lost, for ‘Divines lay it down as a Principle of Truth, 
That Things, which proceed from Natural causes, if Unusual, are 
Signal” (p. 29). 

Before looking at his third book on this theme, a glance at the 
ancient doctrine of comets may not be out of place.®* The theo- 
logical party supported the belief that heavenly apparitions were 
God’s signs of warning to men, and this idea held sway through- 
out the sixteenth century. If a Copernicus, a Paracelsus, or a 
Scaliger (whom Mather read),°° denounced the old view, Polydore 
Vergil, Jean Bodin, or John Knox and John Howe, were spokes- 
men of the great mass of people who still held the old theory. 
Tycho Brahe and Kepler made discoveries that shook the tra- 
ditional faith, and Thomas Browne early had his doubts.” But 
even in the late years of the seventeenth century, “we have 
English authors of much power battling for this supposed scrip- 
tural view”; and Ralph Thoresby, though well enough informed 
to be a member of the Royal Society, in 1682 firmly cherished the 
old doctrine. Even to the end of the seventeenth century, the 
oath usually required of professors of astronomy in Europe 
forbade their teaching that comets obeyed natural laws. 

But the sceptics were busy. Bayle, writing after 1680, did 
much to replace dogma by science, and the new discoveries of 
Tycho Brahe and Kepler fermented in men’s minds. These 


63. Preface. 

64. The full title is: “The Latter Sign Discoursed of, In A Sermon Preached at the 
Lecture of Boston in New-England August, 31. 1682. Wherein is shewed, that the Voice 
of God in Signal Providences, especially when repeated and Iterated, ought to be 
Hearkned unto.’”’ No imprint. Bound with the Kometographia. 

6s. For a convenient summary, see A. D. White, “A History of the Doctrine of 
Comets,” in Papers of the American Historical Association, vol. ii, No. 2; or vol. 1, 
chap. 4 of the same writer’s 4 History of The Warfare of Science with Theology. 

66. He refers to Scaliger’s views, and had cited him earlier in his Mystery of Israel’s 
Salvation. 

67. A. D. White, 4 History, i, 178ff., chap. 4; T. Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, 
book vi, chap. 14. 


LITERARY LEADER AND SPOKESMAN 145 


scientists placed comets among the heavenly bodies, denying 
them fellowship with meteors and other “appearances in the 
neighborhood of the earth.” This, we are told, “dealt a blow 
at the very foundations of the theological argument, and gave a 
great impulse to the idea that comets are themselves heavenly 
bodies moving regularly and in obedience to law.’”’ _Hevel worked 
to develop the new theory, and its victory came finally with 
Halley’s and Newton’s proof that comets are subject to law and 
that their coming can be foretold. Some still clung to the old 
idea, others compromised by saying that comets “might be 
heavenly bodies moving in regular orbits, and even obedient to 
law, and yet be sent as ‘signs in the heavens.’”? Such was 
Semler’s view in 1770; and even in the nineteenth century there 
were outcroppings here and there of belief in the power of comets 
to influence dwellers on earth.®® 

Both Halley and Newton completed their scientific pioneering 
in regard to comets after 1680. In writing his “‘ Kometographia,” 
published in 1683, Mather was a contemporary student of the 
same phenomena.7° He doesnot here confine himself to theology, 
but says, ““I have added some things of the nature, place; motion 
of Comets, which only such as have some skill in Astronomy 
can understand.” * He accepts definitely the new theory that 
comets are heavenly bodies, although we are assured that this 
idea was so opposed to the theological view as to be fatal to it.” 
He maintains that they move regularly, like the planets, and that 
they may be of exactly the same nature as the true planets. He 
is doubtful as to their origin, but thinks they are probably 
groups of small stars collected into a body. We have not pro- 
gressed far from this view.’ He notes that comets move faster 
than planets. He doubts whether “the time of any Comets 


appearance” can’ “‘certainly be preedicted before hand,’ but |.” 


admits that “some very learned men have supposed the knowl- 


68. A. D. White, 4 History, i, 181, 183, 196ff., 201-203, 204, 205. 

69. Lbid., pp. 203, 204. 

70. The title is: “KOMHTOIPASIA. Or A Discourse Concerning Comets; Wherein 
the Nature of Blazing Stars is Enquired into: With an Historical Account of all the 
Comets which have appeared from the Beginning of the World unto this present Year, 
M.DC.LXXXIII. Expressing The Place in the Heavens, where they were seen, Their 
Motion, Forms, Duration; and the Remarkable Events which have followed in the 
World, so far as they have been by Learned Men Observed.” Boston, 1683. 

71. Preface. 

72. Kometographia, pp. 1-3; White, A History, ii, 201, 202. 

73. Cf. J. A. Thomson (ed.), The Outline of Science, p. 22. 


146 INCREASE MATHER 


edge is obtainable,” and calls their belief ‘‘a probable conjecture” 
(p. 16). Though he thinks that there are direct physical effects 
upon the earth from cometary influence (pp. 132, 133) ssa 
idea by no means dead, as one remembers, when our world last 
passed through a comet’s tail,— he says flatly: “The great 
Revolutions and Conjunctions of the Planets come to pass accord- 
ing to the ordinary course of nature” (pp. 19, 20). He condemns 
astrology and its practitioners, with a special attack on that 
“blind but insolent Buzzard, William Lilly.” 3 In short, he is 
quite abreast of the scientific thought of the day in his remarks 
as to the phenomena he studied. When he applies his observations 
to theology, he takes his position, not upon the dogmatic asser- 
tion of the traditional theological theory, but, instead, upon the 
newer compromise maintained for a century after him. “There 
are who think,” he writes, “that inasmuch as Comets may be 
supposed to proceed from natural causes, there is no speaking 
voice of Heaven in them, beyond what is to be said of all other 
' works of God. But certain it is, that many things which may 
happen according to the course of nature, are portentous signs 
of divine anger” (p. 18). From history he draws instances of 
comets’ preceding earthly calamities, and, for his own part, is 
content to hold that a comet, however subject to fixed law, is 
none the less a warning sign. God rules planets, comets, and the 
universe. If heavenly apparitions occur at fixed seasons, known 
to men, can men therefore ignore the fact that God may purpose, 
at the same fixed seasons, to chasten the world? Modern.science, 
with its detailed explanation of phenomena, does not answer the 
prime question as tothe moving cause, which Mather held to be 
_ the Lord. With a faith as great as his, the mere fact that a comet 

appeared periodically could not shake his conviction that God 
wished periodically to warn his children. Even so, the most he 
says is that “blazing stars” are ‘most commonly” signs of evil 
portent, and he admits that some may herald good things. All 
that he insists upon is that they precede earthly changes and, 
as there is room left to fear the worst, “It is certainly much 
better for men to prepare for the worst, then that Judgement 
should overwhelm them in their sin” (pp. 133-135). 

Whatever one thinks of the theological compromise he pro- 
poses, his book quite defies classification as one which “supports 


74. Cf. also, White, 4 History, 1, 205. 
75. Cf. DNB, and note Evelyn’s Diary, Sept. 3, 1699. 


LITERARY LEADER AND SPOKESMAN 147 


the theological cometary theory fully.” Instead, his doctrine is 
most cautiously expressed. Nor is it fair to say that the scientific 
view was a source of alarm to him,’ for, far from showing fear, 
he makes Kepler and Hevel two of his main authorities, cites 
Tycho Brahe, and Robert Hook, and makes repeated use of the 
publications of the Royal Society.7* He accepts some of the 
newest scientific tenets, and his attempt to combine them with 
his religious views results in a position held by others for a 
century after him, and not wholly abandoned to-day. 

One must admit, perhaps, that in the matter of comets, Mather 
was in the front rank of his time. How many other New Eng- 
landers can be shown to have reached the same advanced plane 


of scientific thought? How many men in England, not profes- | 
sional scientists, are abreast of him? Yet even if one clings to | 
the convenient popular doctrine that he was a Puritan blinded | 


to truth by the muffling of dogma, and ignores his books, there 
are obstacles even harder to down. To Mather Joseph Eliot 
writes in 1678: “when your engine comes from London to advance 
speech so incredibly . . . if it wil promote any thing toward our 
confabulation at this distance, or if it were much nearer than 
you mention in your letter, I should think the better of Squire 
Morland.” 7? Now Sir Samuel Morland, tutor of Pepys, Fellow 
of the Royal Society, mathematician and inventor, was one of 
the chief mechanicians of the time.®° An interest in his work 
marks a minister in remote New England as by no means a close- 
minded and provincial preacher. Whatever the “engine” was,* 
the man who heard of it three thousand miles away, and ordered 
it, is not one to call devoid of intellectual curiosity. * And, 
finally, there is positive evidence that on one point Mather, in his 
eager interest in scientific progress, anticipated his fellow towns- 
men by many years. 

In 1683, says Mather, “I promoted a design for a private philo- 


76. A. D. White, 4 History, i, 195. Tied ofa. taro. 

78. On Brahe’s opposition to the “theological” view, cf. [did., vol. i, chap. 4. 

79. MHS Coll., Series 4, vii, 377, 378. 

80. Cf. DNB. 

81. One cannot be sure what the ‘‘engine” Mather was interested in was. Morland 
invented the speaking trumpet — perhaps the reference is to this. The editors of the 
Mather Papers point to a reference in MHS Coll., Series 4, vi, 50off., which seems to 
suggest “a foreshadowing of the magnetic telegraph.”’ See [bid., Series 4, viii, 377 n. 

82. This statement, obviously contradicted repeatedly by the facts of Mather’s life 
and work, — see especially p. 395 of this volume,— is made by V. L. Parrington, in 
the Cambridge History of American Literature, i, 49. 


ait 


148 INCREASE MATHER 


sophical society in Boston, which I hope may have laid the 
foundation for that which will be for future edification.” Cotton 
Mather called it ‘‘a Philosophical Society of Agreeable Gentlemen, 
who met once a Fornight for a Conference upon Improvements 
in Philosophy and Additions to the Stores of Natural History.” * 
A Dutch scholar is said to have used material they collected,” 
and “One that had a share in that Combination . . . now a Fellow 
of the Royal Society in London, afterwards transmitted com- 
munications thither” from the observations of this first scientific 
“academy” in Boston.’s Cotton Mather clearly refers to himself, 
and the dates of some of the phenomena described in his letters 
to the Royal Society make it plain that more than a little of his 
material may have come from the fortnightly meetings of his 
father’s club of “‘agreeable Gentlemen.” *° 

That the institution did not survive is not strange. The politi- 
cal upheaval of the next few years, “the Calamity of the Times,’’*? 
struck a death-blow to more than one Boston enterprise. The 
important fact is that Mather’s society, while it lasted, discussed 
matters worthy of the attention of the Royal Society as late as 
1712, and that it actually did what so sound a judge as Jonathan 
Mayhew declared was still too far advanced for the Boston of 
TWOOG? 

Books and men were absorbing, but the centre of Mather’s 
life was still his church. When fire drove his congregation from 
their first building, he housed them wherever the hospitality of 
his fellow ministers offered. A striking sidelight on his character 


83. Autobiography; Parentator, p. 86; MS. Diary, 1680-84, April 23 and Mar. 25 
1683. 

84. “From which [the proceedings of the Boston society] the learned Wolferdus 
Senguerdius a Professor at Leyden had some of the Materials, wherewith his Philosophia 
Naturalis was Enriched.” Parentator, p. 86. A hasty examination of the Philosophia 
Naturalis reveals nothing directly credited to the Boston society, but, of course, their 
work may have been used none the less, without definite mention of its source. 

85. Parentator, p. 86. 

86. Cotton Mather became a member of the Royal Society. See G. L. Kittredge, 
“Cotton Mather’s Election into the Royal Society,” in Col. Soc. Pub., xiv, and re- 
printed separately, Cambridge, 1912; and Idem, “‘Cotton Mather’s Scientific Com- 
munications to the Royal Society,” in American Antiquarian Society Proceedings, 
xxvi, 18ff. His letters to the Society are accessible in the Gay Transcripts at the Massa- 
chusetts Historical Society. Examples of his describing phenomena observed prior 
to the time of the establishment of the Boston ‘‘Society”” are to be found in the volume 
of transcripts of his letters, pp. 133, 136, 148. On p. 108 he relates an episode of 1687 — 
perhaps this too came through his father and his friends. 

87. Parentator, p. 86. 

88. MS. vol. of “Hollis Papers,” at the Massachusetts Historical Society, p. 5. 


LITERARY LEADER AND SPOKESMAN 149 


comes from the diary of that shrewd observer and sound business 
man, Samuel Sewall, who remarks: “One might gather by Mr 
Willards speech that there was some Animosity in him toward 
Mr Mather: for that he said he chose the Afternoon so that he 
might have a copious auditory: and that when the Town House 
was offered him to preach to his Church distinct, said he would 
not preach in a corner.” *° Jealous of his own prestige and of his 
church’s standing, Mather was not inclined to take a second 
place even when he and his flock were without a roof to shelter 
them. Part of his attitude is explained by his character, in which 
a strongly practical bent ran often into something very like ambi- 
tion. The deeds that were the expression of his faith, satisfied 
him best when their results were visible in the respect they won. 
At the same time, it was not mere self-seeking, or desire for 
eminence, that drove him sometimes to seem eager for public 
notice. Fundamental in his belief was the idea that the humblest 
divine was God’s servant.®® For such a one to be slighted was for 
the world to ignore the voice of Heaven. So also, for a minister 
to fail to preserve the dignity of his post, was to be false to a 
trust. Such is the argument Mather expounds to Michael 
Wigglesworth, now his colleague in the ministry. The older man 
wished to marry his “servant mayd.”’ Not common snobbery or 
arrogance appears in Mather’s entertaining remonstrances to his 
friend. Rather there is here pride in his profession, and a desire 
to uphold the sanctity of his cloth.” 

By 1683 Increase and Cotton Mather ministered to the Second 
Church, unmolested by outside interference. Yet even in the 
church there were critics to be met. At dinner with the magis- 
trates, Governor Leverett, Mather says, “reflected on me, on 
ye account of some passages in my serm®. viz. yt strangers sd, 
yt yy had seen more drunkennes in N. E. in halfe a yeare yn in 
FE. in all yir lives. Hee sd yt yy yt sd solyed. And yt yr was more 
drunkennes in N. E. many years agoe yn yr is now, yea at ye 
first beginning of ys Colony.” Mr. Stoughton suggested pleas- 
antly that Mather preach a recantation sermon. But he was 
not easy to quell. “I told him, no, but if men wld not accept 
my Labors God will.”’ And, privately, he reflects with a hint 
of acidity, and what one suspects was a pun: “‘As for ye Gover- 

89. MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 30. 

go. His views on this are expressed in his sermon on “Sleeping at Sermons,” in his 


Practical Truths. 
g1. MHS Coll., Series 4, vili, 94, 95. 


rational men wld regard wt was sd ye more for yt. 


150 INCREASE MATHER 


nor, He hath bin ye principal Author of ye multitude of ordi- 
naries wch be in Boston, giving licenses wn ye townsmen wld 
not doe it. No wonder yt N.E. is visited wn ye Head is so 
spirited.” Again, on another day, “After ye church was gone,” 
Captain Thomas Lake, soon to die in Philip’s War, and Mather’s 
good friend John Richards, told him “‘yt wn ministers did lay a 
solemn charge vpo" people, it might take in ye ignorant, but no 
” His con- 
ception of the clergy’s place is clear in his reply that “Truth had 
ye more Authority with it wn it came in such a way, as wn a 
Father injoyned ys or yt duty, yr was ye more weight spoke in 
wt was sd, bec. it came from a Father.” And he reminded them 
of the text, “Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit 
yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give 
account, that they may do it with joy and not with grief: for that 
is unprofitable for you.” 

In the main, however, his sermons, his public services, and his 


‘visits to those who needed what he could give, sufficed to keep 


<2 


him firmly at the head of his people. His church gained nearly 
twice as many new members in the nine years from 1675 to 1683, 
as in the preceding nine years. The most successful season in 
this respect, save one, was 1677, when twenty-eight members 
were added. One suspects that the lesson of the war, as Mather 
taught it, struck home. The greatest year of all was 1681, when 
thirty-five persons joined the Second Church.» Such facts carry 


refutation of the theory that religious interest was waning, and of 


the statements of travellers admittedly hostile to the Congre- 
gational way; nor can the citation of one individual, who wrote 
years later, shake the force of the original record. 

It is only on the personal side that we lack facts on Mather’s 
life. Plain as is the tale of his activities, one would like a closer 
view of the human aspect of the character that carried him 
through them. Surely there was power of personality in the suc- 
cessful preacher, which lent force to his pleas. As for his appear- 
ance, we may get some idea of it, perhaps, from a mezzotint 

g2. Diary, Jan. 27, 1675-76. 93.’ [bid., Feb. 4, 1675-76. 

94. For the preceding nine years there were 80 admissions; for the years in question, 
1 allege 

aes My figures are from a MS. copy of part of the original records. The copy is 
owned by the Second Church. 


96. J. T. Adams, The Founding, p. 373, cites, as evidence of the state of feeling in 
the years before the loss of the charter, a letter written by John Bishop, in 1687. 


oe 


LITERARY LEADER AND SPOKESMAN bas 


owned by the Massachusetts Historical Society, which probably 
dates from 1683.97 
The picture is sadly marred by time, but enough remains to 


show us a rather full oval face, a long broad nose, and a wide, » 


half-smiling mouth. There are heavy lines under the eyes, sug- 
gesting the mark left by Mather’s close study and his illnesses. 
It is not a beautiful portrait, but, allowing for the crudeness of 
drawing, one sees in it a face expressive of character, and one 
worth looking at more than once. 

Whatever his appearance, Mather was certainly seen by his 
contemporaries as a leader, a fact proved once more in 1679 when 
it is he who prevails on his fellow workers to ask the General 
Court to call a Reforming Synod, to answer two questions: 
“What are the euills that have provoked the Lord to bring his 
judgements on New England?” and ‘“‘What is to be done so 
that those evills may be reformed?” % 

The delegates met in September, 1679, and Mather was promi- 
‘nent in their councils. At the close of the first session he was 
chosen, with Oakes and others, to draw up for the Court the 
Synod’s result. In October this work was ready, and printed 
as “The Necessity of Reformation.” At its presentation, Mather 
preached “‘a very Potent Sermon.” % 

The same committee had been charged with the preparation 
of a new Confession of Faith. ‘Mather and Oakes had been in 
England while the Savoy Synod was in Session,” and their pro- 
posed “platform” for the local church was, with few changes, 
the Savoy Confession.'°® This was presented to the second ses- 
sion of the Synod, held in May, 1680. At that time, “though 
there were many Elder, and some Famous, Persons in that Ven- 
erable Assembly, yet Mr. Mather was chosen their Moderator.” ** 


97. Cf. K. B. Murdock, The Portraits of Increase Mather. 

98. W. Walker, Creeds and Platforms, pp. 412-414, 416. 

99. Lbid., pp. 416-419; Parentator, p. 85. The result of the Synod was printed with 
the title: “The Necessity of Reformation With the Expedients subservient thereunto, 
asserted; in Answer to two Questions 1. What are the Evils that have provoked the Lord to 
bring his Fudgments on New-England? 1. What is to be done that so those Evils may be 
Reformed? Agreed upon by the Elders and Messengers of the Churches assembled in the 
Synod 4t Boston in New-England, Sept. 10. 1679.”’ Boston, 1679. 

In view of Cotton Mather’s statement (Parentator, p. 85), the book is usually in- 
cluded among Increase Mather’s works. For a reprint of it, see Walker, Creeds and 
Platforms, pp. 423ff. 

100. Lbid., pp. 420, 421, 340-408. 

101. Parentator, p. 87. 


eM ci 


152 INCREASE MATHER 


He served, and carried the meeting to a successful end, though 
“he was then Ill, under the Approaches & Beginnings of a 
Fever.” This was to be for him one more of the serious sicknesses 
that checkered his life, and, for the town, an occasion of fasting 
and prayer for his recovery.*? Early in September he began 
to preach again,™® and that he had regained by 1683 not only his 
health but his vigor of speech, is proved by the year’s events. 

We have seen that by this date English hostility to the Massa- 
chusetts Charter had gone dangerously far. The agents had been 
worsted in their unequal combat with the Stuarts’ imperial 
policy, fostered day by day, as it was, by that indefatigable foe 
of Puritans, Edward Randolph. Delay and evasion could no 
longer serve the colony’s turn. It was a time for leadership and 
action. Increase Mather, foremost in the college and in church 
councils, influential in a Jarge Boston congregation, known 
abroad, and proved a skilful and popular writer, was ideally 
equipped to defend New England. Silence in such times would 
have been for him treachery to his faith. 

Opportunity came quickly. In October, 1683, a Quo Warranto 
‘against the Charter and Government” of Massachusetts was 
issued, and Dudley and Richards returned to Boston. Close upon 
their heels came Randolph, bearing the Quo Warranto itself. 
With it arrived a royal “Declaration” promising that, if the 
colony would make full submission to his will, the king would 
simply regulate and alter the Charter, as seemed best to him.*™ 


¢ 


The Governor, Simon Bradstreet, and the Assistants, with a — 


prudent eye on political considerations, voted to answer humbly 
in accordance with the king’s pleasure. The deputies, repre- 
senting the outlying towns, less interested in trade than in the 
keeping of the established order, opposed the vote.*’> In Boston 
a meeting of the freemen was called, to consider what answer they 
should make toward the breaking of the deadlock. 

Though the freemen were all church members, and thus in- 
clined, perhaps, to vote to keep the Charter, which seemed 1n- 
dispensable to the success of Congregationalism, there were 
among them, none the less, many men who knew the value of 
temporizing in a matter likely to affect the relations of the colony 

102. Autobiography; Long Island Historical Society Memoirs, 1, 380. 

103. MS. Diary, Sept. 6, 1680. 


104. T. Hutchinson, History, i, 338; Memorial History of Boston, i, 375. 
105. Hutchinson, History, 1, 338, 339- 


ee 


LITERARY LEADER AND SPOKESMAN 153 


and the mother country in regard to trade. They included some, 
as we have seen, not wholly under the clergy’s spell. There were 
varied opinions and classes, merchants with English interests 
beside men for whom the world began and ended in Boston, in 
the crowd that filled the Town-house on January twenty-first, 
1683-84.7° They had read the king’s “Declaration,” and also 
Mather’s “‘Elaborate Answer to it,” !°? with his assurance that 
they would “‘act neither the part of Good Christians, nor of True 
Englishmen, if by any Act of theirs they should be Accessary to 
the Plot then manageing to produce a General Shipwreck of Liber- 
ties.” They had heard his foes call him the “Mahomet of New 
England,” and when, at the request of the Boston deputies, he 
appeared before them in the crowded Town-house that January 
day, they knew him as a man committed to a policy.t°® His fame 
made his words tell, and the most hostile in his audience must 
perforce have listened with some degree of respect. 

In Cranfield’s words, Mather indulged in “insolent speeches.”!°9 
The scene is pictured best, possibly, in his own record: “I made a 
short speech to the freemen in these words: ‘As the question is 
now stated, (viz., whether you will make a full submission & en- 


tire resignation of the Charter, & privileges of it to his Majesty’s | 
pleasure,) we shall sin against God.if we-vote’an affirmative to it. © 


The Scripture teaches us otherwise. . .. Nor would it be wisdom 
in us to comply. We know that David made a wise choice when 
he chose to fall into the hands of God rather than into the hands 
of man. If we make a submissive & entire resignation, we fall into 
the hands of men immediately. But if we do it not, we keep our- 
selves still in the hands of God, & trust ourselves with his provi- 
dence. And who knows what God may do for us? Moreover, 
there are examples before our eyes, the consideration whereof 
should be of weight with us. Our brethren hard by; what have 
they gained by their readiness to submit & comply? Who, if 
they had abode by their liberties longer would not have been 

. foal . 
miserable so soon. And we hear from London, that when it 
came to, the loyal citizens would not make a full submission and 
entire resignation to pleasure, lest, haply, their posterity should 

106. MS. Diary, Jan. 21, 1683-84; Autobiography and Parentator (p. 90) give 
Jan. 23 as the date. 

107. Parentator, p. go. Mather’s answer may be the document printed in MHS 
Coll., Series 3, i, 74. 


108. Parentator, p. 90; Autobiography. 
109. Cal. State Papers, Am. and W.1I., vol. xi % 1683. 


164 INCREASE MATHER 


curse them. And shall we do it then? I hope there is not one 
freeman in Boston that will dare to be guilty of so great a sin.’”’ 7° 

Mather surely realized, as he spoke, how much depended on 
his words. If he did not foresee how much the result of this, his 
‘first important entry into politics, was to affect his career in 
future years, he cannot have ignored its meaning for New Eng- 
land at the moment. If his appeal were heeded, there would be 
not only a vindication of his personal power, but a heavy weight 
to turn the scale of general opinion in the colony. If, on the 
other hand, the townsmen tamely threw themselves upon the 
royal mercy, it must seem to him a personal defeat and a death- 
blow to what he passionately believed were the highest ideals of 
New England. . 

The issue was not long in doubt. From the crowd in the hall, 
one man, outraged by the speech, rose, and left “in great heat.” ™ 
Then ‘‘Many of the Freemen fell into Tears; and there was a 
General Acclamation, We Thank you, Syr! We Thank you, Syr!” 
The question was put, and carried against submission, without a 

- single dissenting vote. “This act of Boston had a great influence 
~ on the country.” ™ } 

110. Autobiography; Parentator, p. 91. 


111. R. N. Toppan, Edward Randolph, iv, 244. 
112. Parentator, p. 92; Autobiography. 





GliA ba Ral 


“ILLUSTRIOUS PROVIDENCES,” AND THE FLIGHT 
TO ENGLAND 


| Eee New England the meeting of the Boston freemen, how- 
ever great its influence on opinion, worked little practical 
result. England’s plans, and the current of political develop- 
ment, had gone too far to be checked. But to Mather not only 
did it prove that, at forty-four, he was a man of personal power in 
Boston, and one whose word was to be reckoned with in public 


concerns, but it opened for him a new field. The next five years ” 


of his life were marked by an increasing interest in civil affairs. 
Thence came troubles, abuse, and, finally, his bold entry into 
what is, in many ways, the most actively interesting of all his 
undertakings — his mission to England. 

The years from 1683 to 1688 were, of course, a period of the 
most profound public unrest in New England. No one in Boston 
who thought at all could deafen himself to the news that matters 
of vital moment were on foot. No one lived those years without 
realizing that then if ever were needed leaders to speak for all the 


parties in the political turmoil. Mather “behaved with so much / 


prudence, as to give no room to take hold of any part of his 
conduct.” * Yet he was not idle, and his voice and pen were lent 
more than once on the side of what be believed to be the right. 

In all these troubled years, he never failed to find time for his 
church. He remained first of all Boston’s leading divine, and no 
mere civil disturbance shook his unswerving loyalty to his pas- 
toral work. In the college he won new prominence, and to it he 
turned yearly more of his active interest. Finally, as an author, 
he did not allow his star to wane. Year by year Boston presses 
printed his sermons and treatises. Boston booksellers sold them 
over their counters as the unquestioned “leading books” and, 
almost certainly, the “best sellers” of the day. And from the 
remote twentieth century, we mark this period as the birth-time 
of Mather’s most enduring literary work. 


1. T. Hutchinson, History, i, 366. 


= 


156 INCREASE MATHER 


His activities can be seen only against the turbulent historical 
background of these years. No period in New England's history, 
perhaps, has been more written about. None, perhaps, offers 
more scope for controversy and debate. For us the bare facts 
may suffice, with such hints as we can get as to how they ap- 
peared at the time. Evaluation of the events of 1683 to 1688, 
from the point of view of later history, subsequent political 
theory, or twentieth-century doctrines of democracy, remains 
as far outside our range as it was beyond Mather’s ken. 

Briefly, then, the old charter of Massachusetts was declared 
vacated on October 23, 1684. Colonel Kirke, whose name still 
connotes cruelty in the exercise of authority, and was justly 
anathema to the Puritans, was appointed as the first royal 
governor under the new régime.? He was never sent to take up 
his duties, and Randolph assumed the credit, laying the saving 
of New England from the Colonel’s “lambs” to his own diplo- 
matic zeal. Mather, on the other hand, believed that here was an 
answer to his eager prayers, and confirmation of what he saw 
as a heaven-sent consolation vouchsafed directly from above!‘ 
Whatever the reason, it was not Kirke, but that first of New 
England’s long line of adroit politicians, Joseph Dudley, who 
received James II’s commission as chief executive in New Eng- 
land. Suspected by the more ardent defenders of the charter as 
a half-hearted worker in their cause, hailed by Randolph at first 
as a pliant tool and then rejected as a dangerous recalcitrant, 
he had by no means an easy course to trace.’ Yet, on the whole, 
with such power as was given him, he governed justly. He saw 
that it was a time for gradual change, and for education of the 
people in the ideals of the new form of government. He detected 
a few, at least, of the weaknesses in the new scheme of things, and 
hoped to correct them. He received the king’s commission from 
Randolph on May 14, 1686, two days after he had been defeated 
for election to the Court of Assistants. Not the vote of the people, 
or any part of them, but the royal decree, was now New England’s 
law.® 


9. Cf. DNB; MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 87 n. 

3. Cf. J.T. Adams, The Founding, pp. 407, 408, and references given there. Kirke’s 
troops in Tangier were called his “lambs.” Cf. DNB. 

4. Autobiography. 

5. E. Kimball, The Public Life of Foseph Dudley, pp. 17, 33, 343 R. N. Toppan, 
Edward Randolph, iti, 145-149, iv, 103-110. 

6. Kimball, pp. 23, 24, 25. 


{ 
H 


' THE FLIGHT TO ENGLAND 157 


Dudley faced no active resistance. Various members of the 
General Court sought to persuade him not to accept the royal 
appointment.? Increase Mather was present at one such con- 
ference, and Dudley, before his inauguration, sought his advice 
and support.® Advice he secured, no doubt; support he did not. 
He went on without it. For the time, opposition to the new 
government contented itself with wordy protests. 

By the new commission, Massachusetts was placed in the 
hands of a president and a council of seventeen, all appointed by 
the king.’ Hitherto the basis of the government had been an_ 
elected assembly. If the old system had been intolerant and 
undemocratic in denying the franchise to all who were not church 
members, the new plan was certainly in greater contradiction to 
any theory of direct popular representation. The President of 
Massachusetts now governed also Maine, New Hampshire, and 
the “King’s Province” of Rhode Island. Thus the government 
of New England lay in the hands of a few men appointed by a 
king across the sea, and no one, whatsoever his position in the 
community, might vote as to who should make his laws. The 
Council had complete military, judicial and executive power. It 
could not legislate, or impose new taxes, but it could spend what 
was received from the revenue system already in force. 

The members of Dudley’s Council were wisely chosen. They 
represented well enough the territorial interests involved, but 
not so adequately the various social classes of the population. 
Seven of the councillors from Massachusetts had formerly been 
Assistants, but they were nearly all of one political color, and 
of them but three had won election when the voters last expressed 
their choice. They were enough in touch with Massachusetts 
standards and moods to avoid too decidedly unpopular measures. 
Moreover, they spoke for the old “‘liberties” of New England in 
asking the king for a popular assembly. This was denied, but the 
Council’s request helped to keep such discontent as there was, 
smouldering nseen. If an individual offered resistance, here and 
there, he met prompt and sharp reproof.7° 

Dudley’s rule was short. His successor was not equipped with 
the same insight into the temper of the colony. Sir Edmund 


7. Kimball, p. 25; MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 139. 
8. T. Hutchinson, History, i, 352 n. 

g. Kimball, pp. 27ff. 

10. Lbid., pp. 29, 32, 35. 


ff 
\ 


i" 
T 
j 
} 
i 


158 INCREASE MATHER | 


Andros, an Englishman, who had proved his ability as royal 
governor of New York, landed in Boston on December 20, 1686." 
Some of the colonists may early have suspected him as a “ty- 
rant,’ and since their day he has been painted more than once as 
a model despot.” Most of his shortcomings may be explained as 
due to lack of tact, rather than to any desire to set {up an oppres- 
sive rule. Nor should we forget that he had royal orders to carry 
out. His Council, however, found little to do, and came more 
and more to leave all the power in the governor’s hands. To 
Mather, Andros may well have seemed a sinister figure, for his 
very name harked back to the days when his fath~» was in 
‘power in Guernsey, and when the government he + » resented 


/“nersecuted” Increase out of that island. The ¢o ts asa 


whole, however little predisposed to dread the new ,overnor, 
soon found cause for complaint. | 
Official fees were increased, legal business was centralized in 
Boston, and, worst of all, land titles were said to have been 
impaired by the fall of the charter. Thus every owner of real 
estate in New England must pay for the validation of his right 
to his holdings, and the fees for this, at times, ran high. More- 
over, Andros and his Council had power to impose such taxes as 
they wished.** At once the cry of “‘taxation without representa- 


tion” was raised, and for upholding it John Wise of Ipswich and — 
_ others were imprisoned.” This doctrine had quite as much power 


to inflame the popular mind in the seventeenth century as in the 
eighteenth. | 

As for the church under Dudley and Andros, the new govern- 
ment was committed ostensibly to liberty of conscience. It in- 
sisted upon the right of the Church of England to hold service, 
and refused to impose any political disabilities upon any citizen 
for his failure to meet a religious test. Thus far the new régime, 
seen from our safe distance, worked clearly for toleration and 
liberal ideals. Curiously enough, a government in most respects 
arbitrary, depriving New England of such popular control as she 


11. MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 159ff. 

12. For views of Andros, see Andros Tracts; Channing, ii, 173ff.; and J. T. Adams, 
The Founding, pp. 411ff. 

13. E. Kimball, The Pudlic Life, p. 44, and references given there. 

14. Amias, father of Edmund Andros, was made bailiff of Guernsey in 1651, but 
did not take office actually until 1661. 

15. J. T. Adams, The Founding, pp. 414-425; Channing, ii, 179-185. 

16. For Wise, see J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, ii, 428ff. 


a, “i. peal 


THE FLIGHT TO ENGLAND 159 


had had, was, at the same time, the champion of liberty for 

religions, and the opponent of the old exclusive supremacy of 

one sect.'? At the same time, the theory did not always appear so 

well in practice, and more than one event under the new laws was 

by no means reassuring to liberal-minded advocates of tolerance. 

The Church of England was to be not merely tolerated but 

especially privileged.** An English governor in New Hampshire, 

Bostonians remembered, had jailed a Congregational minister 

for his refusal to read the Anglican service.?? Behind the scenes | 
there was a movement toward setting up in the colony the 

supremacy of the established church of the mother country. 

Much of this must have been public knowledge, and lovers of 

toleration cannot have been impressed by proposals to tax Con- 

gregational churches to support the form of worship Andros 

favored.*° If it be true that the Puritans had done the same 

thing in the interests of their church, it does not alter the fact 

that the change from the dominance of one sect to the dominance, 
of another was merely change, not progress. And to the Puritans, 
still believing that their charter had been rightfully granted and 
had authorized them to form a church-state on Congregational 
lines, Andros’s commandeering of the Old South Church for the 
English service seemed aggression against traditional rights.7 
Certainly it was no example of tolerance, inasmuch as the English 
chaplain had been allowed to minister to his congregation in the 
Town-house.” 

To-day we may be thankful that the new government came. 
None of us would wish to live in a Puritan town, perhaps, and 
there are unlimited possibilities for conjecture as to what might 
have happened if the Congregational way had been suffered to 
flourish in close alliance with the civil power of the colony. But, 
to the Bostonians of the sixteen-eighties, the ultimate gain for 
liberty was not the most apparent feature in connection with — 
the post-charter administration. To the Puritans it meant the / 
loss of their position as leaders of the religious establishment. 

17. J. T. Adams, The Founding, p. 420. 

18. Colonial Society Publications, ii, 54. 

Ig. J. Belknap, History, 1, 204-211. 

20. Randolph wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1686: ‘‘I humbly repre- 
sent to your grace, that the three meeting houses in Boston might pay twentey shillings 
a weeke, a piece... towards the defraieing our church charges.” T. Hutchinson, 
Collection, ii, 292. 

a1. J. T. Adams, The Founding, pp. 420, 421; and MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 171. 

22. MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 141. 


160 INCREASE MATHER 


It meant the coming to New England of the same power that 
persecuted their fellow nonconformists in England. Red coats 
and gold lace, sword-play, may-poles, celebrations of Christmas, 
and the gaiety of Andros’s followers, were direct violations of the 
Puritan’s code of public morals. Suggestions that no marriage 
should be legal unless made according to the Book of Common 
Prayer, or that Congregationalists should contribute to support 
English forms of worship, seemed death-blows to their religious 
system. To the clergy, the new order meant a loss of power, and 
the exaltation of rivals for church leadership. Yet they were 
temperate, for the most part, in word and act, under the royal 
rule, and if Mather be taken as an example, there is little to 
show that their prime concern was with their own loss of prestige. 
To them the most serious innovation was the violation of the 
standards they held to have been divinely laid down for worship 
and conduct. To have ignored the danger would have been to 
make their life-work a mockery and to yield tamely to what they 
must see aS an invasion of a new Eden by the sin of the world. 

Here and there, historians, mindful of later progress toward 
religious liberty in. New England, suggest that the days under 
Andros were times when a cruel and narrow-minded group of 
ministers and church members opposed an enlightened people 


- who welcomed the change in affairs as the dawning of freedom.” 


Oe 


Fascinating as such visions are, they fade when one deals with 
the facts. One cannot fix the image of the Puritan preacher as 
the bloody persecutor restrained only by a progressive people. 
Too often the divine wrote and preached moderately, urging per- 
suasion rather than force. From 1683 to 1688 there is only con- 
jecture to support the idea that the clergy under Andros mourned 
the loss of their unquestioned supremacy, while the people heaved 
grateful sighs. Indeed, some of the ministers welcomed James II’s 
proclamation of religious liberty, even in the face of shrewd ob- 
jections from those who dreaded opening the door to equal 
opportunity for all creeds. As for the people, every church 
member lost his vote. If he was a sincere Puritan, he found about 
him many breaches of the rules of life he held to be right. If he 
was no more than a professing churchman, he was still likely to 
be imbued with the traditional idea of the colony’s charter 
privileges. As for the man not a church member, and never a 


23. MHS Proc., xxiii, 399ff., entries for March 16, April 17, 23, 27, and May 1, 1687. 
24. J. T. Adams, The Founding, pp. 396, 422. 


THE FLIGHT TO ENGLAND 161 


voter, he was often, obviously, a church-goer and more or less 
moved by what he heard in the meeting-house, and, consequently, 
opposed to much. that Andros brought. Finally, leaving religion 
out of account altogether, no man of property, no man with any 
legal business on his hands, can have failed to chafe now and then 
under the new management of official transactions and the new 
taxes. The only New Englander likely to find Andros and his 
Council ideal rulers, or an improvement on the old leaders, was 
the man who owned no property, paid no taxes, and had no 
interest in Puritan manners and rules of life, or the citizen who 
was so ardent in his devotion to the Church of England that he 
regarded the chance to hear its services read as a privilege out- 
weighing disenfranchisement and royal taxes.” There is not 
material here for a very substantial picture of an irate clergy, 
bent on intolerance and persecution, confronted by Edmund 
Andros and a “people” delighted at losing such popular repre- 
sentation as they had had, revelling in the chance to pay their 
earnings to the governor’s agents, and serenely aware that the 
new system was working toward a freer New England to come 
years later. 

As for Mather, he continued busily following out his many- 
sided career. Whatever his growing concern with public interests, 
the staple elements of his life-work were not neglected. 

At home the progress of his seven children gave him a chance to 
put his strict views on religious education into force. Nathaniel, 
a hard student, was finishing his course at Harvard. In 1685 and 
1686 he published two almanacs, and his promise brought joy to 
his household.?® There were shadows, too; for one more loss, this 
time of a brother, helped to teach Increase Mather that his 
family were by no means beyond the all-powerful hand of God. 
His brother Timothy, Richard Mather’s second son, a leading 
citizen of Dorchester, died on January 14, 1685, after a fall from 
a scaffold in a barn.” He, alone among the brothers, had not 
entered the ministry, and there is in the writings of his brother 
and nephew a marked silence as to his life. Probably he did not 
seem to them pious enough to be worthy of his ancestry, and his 
brother Nathaniel wrote from Dublin, “I desyre to mourn over 
poor Tims case... that his heart should work in so quite con- 


2s. C. Mather, Magnalia, book IV, chap. 10; J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, iii, 
321 ff. 
26. History of Dorchester, p. 248. 


162 INCREASE MATHER 


trary a way argues a very evill and unhumbled frame.” *7 Yet 
his death cannot have passed unmourned by his two surviving 
brothers. 

There was consolation for more than one such loss in Cotton 
Mather’s continued progress in godliness and leadership. He 
was beginning to follow in his father’s footsteps as a writer, and 
by 1688 he had printed a poem, an almanac, an elegy on Mr. 
Nathaniel Collins, and two sermons.?® We remember that by 
1683 he was at work as his father’s colleague in the Second 
Church. On May 13, 1685, he was formally ordained there. He 
writes, ‘With a Soul, inexpressibly irradiated from on High, I 
went into one of the vastest Congregations that has ever been 
seen in these parts of the World”; and “In the Afternoon, my 
Father having prayed and preached ... intimating he knew not 
but that God might now call him out of the world... the Ordi- 
nation was performed, with a more than ordinary Solemnitie, 
producing a greater Number of moved Hearts and weeping Eyes, 
than perhaps have been at any Time here seen together.” *° 

The next year, on May fourth, he tells of another important 
family event. ‘“‘I was married,” he writes, “and the good Provi- 
dence of God caused my Wedding to be attended with many 
Circumstances of Respect and Honour above most that have ever 
been in these parts of the World.” 8° His bride was Abigail 
Phillips of Charlestown, daughter of a colonel, a leading citizen, 
and a good church member. “‘’Tis said was a great Wedding.” * 

After living in Charlestown for a few months, Cotton and his 
wife came back to Boston, and he writes: “I took an House, 
wherein my Father lived, in the years 1677, and 78” —a dwelling 
which was, as we have seen, close to the church, and conveniently 
near Increase Mather’s door.” 

With his son becoming more and more of an active ally and 
fellow scholar, Increase did not desert his books. His diaries 
testify to his reading, and a few volumes still preserved were 
acquired during these years. Most interesting to us are George 
Herbert’s “Priest to the Temple; or, the Country Parson,” and 
Jeremy Taylor’s ‘Discourse of the Liberty of Prophesying. 
Showing the Unreasonableness of Prescribing to Other Mens 


27. MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 18. 

28. J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, iii, 42ff. 

29. MHS Coll., Series 7, vii, 98, 99- 31. Ibid., Series 5, v, 136. 
G0. 11d, 120,002 7 32. Ibid., Series 7, vii, 129. 


THE FLIGHT TO ENGLAND 163 


Faith, and the Iniquity of Persecuting Differing Opinions.” 33 
This was, if not “the first or the fullest statement of the prin- 
ciples of toleration,” still “the most fruitful in its effects upon 
the English mind.” 34 Its presence in Mather’s hands in 1686 
points to the fact that he by no. means ignored the claims of 
liberty of conscience. 

As for his own writings, he published from 1683 to 1688 eight 
new books. Three of them reached second editions. Boston 
presses also reprinted some of his earlier work. 

Of the new publications the earliest was “An Arrow against 
Profane and Promiscuous Dancing.” 35 Ostensibly written by the 
ministers of Boston, the book was ascribed by Thomas Prince to 
Mather, and his autobiography confirms his authorship.3° We 
know that at a meeting of ministers where dancing was dis- 
cussed, he “struck at the Root, speaking against mixt Dances.” 37 
The book is simply a denunciation of mixed dancing, basing its 
argument on the Scriptures and the authority of learned writers. 
Now, if ever, New England should shun such errors. “Is this a 
time for Figs and Galiards!” 3° 

Similar in tone, and equally conditioned by the changing scene 
in Boston, was a “‘Testimony against Several Prophane and 
Superstitious Customs.” 3° No one of Mather’s-writings is less 
suited-to twentieth-century readers, and none more clearly dis- 
plays the Puritans’ strictness as to what seem to us moral ines- 
sentials. Beginning with an attack on “Stage-Plays,” and a 
declaration of the barbaric paganism involved in the setting up 
of a may-pole, Mather devotes his first discourse to “Health 
drinking.” His definition of the term makes his charges seem 


33. New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxvii, 347. Mather’s copy 
of Taylor is now owned by the American Antiquarian Society. 

34. DNB, ‘Jeremy Taylor.” 

35. The full title is: “An Arrow Against Profane and Promiscuous Dancing. Drawn 
out of the Quiver of the Scriptures. By the Ministers of Christ at Boston in New-Eng- 
land.”” Boston, 1684. One of Mather’s books published between 1683 and 1688 is not 
discussed until Chapter 16. See pages 272, 273 post. 

36. J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, 1, 446. In the Autobiography Mather writes: 
“This caused me to write that little discourse about profane & promiscuous dancing then 
printed.” 

37. MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 104. 

38. Page 21. 

39. The full title is: ““A Testimony Against several Prophane and Superstitious 


Customs, Now Practised by some in New-England. The Evil whereof is evinced from. 


the Holy Scriptures, and from the Writings both of Ancient and Modern Divines.” 
London, 1687. 


164 INCREASE MATHER 


sounder than they otherwise might. “An Health is that which 
doth Oblige men to Drink such a quantity of Liquor, as an Indi- 
cation of their Praying for the Health or Prosperity of such a 
Person, or of such a Design.”” The attack is essentially one upon 
drunkenness and customs which lead men to it. As for gambling, 
it is “Best and safest to abstain.” Christmas celebrations are 
condemned as keeping alive a pagan festival, and savoring of 
Catholicism. It is a comfort to find one point on which we can 
still see Mather’s seriousness as not wholly out of proportion to 
his subject. In good round terms he denounces cock-fighting, 
and pleads against cruelty to animals. The book closes with a 
lament that such evils as have been mentioned dare show their 
heads in New England.*? | 

It is a relief to turn back to printed sermons on more funda- 
mental themes. ‘The Greatest Sinners Exhorted and En- 
couraged” * is essentially a plea that men may repent and turn 
to Christ. If there is emphasis on the idea that the Day of Judg- 
ment is to be a day of wrath for the wicked, one is nowhere 
allowed to forget the saving power of Jesus. “If any man come 
to Jesus:Christ, He will in no wise to cast him out.” # A fruitful 
life is the best means of glorifying God. The love of God is the 
greatest of earthly happiness. God is the greatest good man can 
know. In communion with him is bliss, in Christ is salvation, 
and for men the call to repentance and conversion sounds clear. 
Such doctrine is not too harsh for any Christian, however relaxed 
the times in which he lives. The style is always straightforward 
and simple, sometimes pointed with a vivid expression or a well- 
turned climax, and continually persuasive in tone. Modern types 
and punctuation would lend to this little book the air of a tract 
by no means out of date. 

The “Mystery of Christ” “ is a more elaborate work of the 
same sort. Of it Mather said, “I will confess to you, that no Sub- 
‘jects ever insisted on by me, have had so much of my heart, as these 
which I now present unto you” (p. 5). He preaches of the nature 

40. Preface and chap. I, pp. 12, 39. 

4t. The full title is: “The Greatest Sinners Exhorted and Encouraged Io Come to 
Christ, and that Now Without Delaying. Also, The Exceeding Danger of men’s Defer- 
ring their Repentance. Together with a Discourse about the Day of Fudgement. And on 
Several other Subjects.” Boston, 1686. 

42. Title of the first section of the book. 


43. The full title is: “The Mystery of Christ Opened and Applyed. In Several Ser- 
mons, Concerning the Person, Office, and Glory of Jesus Christ.” Boston, 1686. 


THE FLIGHT TO ENGLAND 165 


of Christ, His redeeming power, His divine Sonship, His combin- 
ing in one person the God and the man, and, above all, the 
strength and beauty of His love. Here speaks what made Puri- 
tanism more than a dry husk of dogma, the passionate absorption 
of the true believer in an enthusiastic personal devotion to the 
divine ideal as revealed to men in Jesus Christ. Such flaming 
religious feeling does not lose its appeal, and few pages of this 
book need be corrected to fit it to be read by, and to lend inspira- 
tion to, an ardent Christian mystic of the present. Avowedly, 
the love of the Son of God and His power, constituted for Increase 
Mather the heart of religion. “J have...in the Course of my/ / 
Ministry among you (you know) preached concerning Christ morat 
than on any other subject” (p. 1). His notes in his autobiography | 
show how preéminently the New Testament was the basis of his |» 
preaching. As for the style of the book, we are told, “it would) 
have bin easy to have discoursed on such mysterious subjects, after 
such a Metaphysical strain as none but Scholars should have 
understood anything,’ and “‘to make an ignorant man under- 
stand these Mysteries in some good measure, will put us to the 
tryal of our skill, & trouble us a great deal more than if we were 
to discuss a Controversy or handle a subtile point of Learning in 
the Schools” (p. 4). With a desire for simple exposition, and a 
realization of the difficulty of attaining it, Mather wrote a book of 
which Urian Oakes, who read it before his death, could say 
“they [the sermons] are in my opinion very much to the purpose, 
recommended to intelligent Readers by their Solidity & Succinct- 
ness, comprizing in a /ittle room the choicest Notions that refer 
to the Subjects discoursed on: They are also well /evelled to the 
meanest Capacityes, and thereby singularly fitted to the ends 
designed.” #* There is no fault to be found with this criticism. 
Somewhat different in aim is the “Sermon Occasioned by the 
Execution of a Man,” 4 a timely printing of an address delivered 
on an occasion of great popular interest. One James Morgan, a 
confessed murderer, was sentenced to death, and Increase Mather 


44. See reverse of title-page. 

45. The full title is: ““A Sermon Occasioned by the Execution of 4 man found Guilty 
of Murder Preached at Boston in N. E. March 11% 1688 (Together with the Confes- 
sion, Last Expressions, & solemn Warning of that Murderer to all persons; especially 
to Young men, to beware of those Sins which brought him to his miserable End.)”” 
Boston 1687. This title is that of the second edition. 


166 INCREASE MATHER 


up the first attempt at a meeting, but finally the crowd moved 
to the South Church and there the sermon was preached.** The 
murderer opportunely declared that drunkenness and failure to 
go to church worked his undoing. Accordingly Increase Mather 
denounced these two sins. He mourns that “‘of later years, a 
kind of Strong Drink hath been common amongst us, which the 
poorer sort of people, both in Town & Country, can make them- 
selves drunk with, at cheap and easy rates.’’ He condemns 
cruelty of all kinds. He paints in a few paragraphs a sufficiently 
lurid picture of the torments of the damned. But the climax is 
once more not admonition, not repentance through fear, but 
the mercy of Christ. If the criminal be sincere in repentance his 
soul may be saved. “‘Go to Christ for life .. . look unto the Lord 
¥esus that you may live and not dye forever.... Don’t think 
you shall be saved only because good men have pray’d for you, or 
for the Confession of your sins which you have now made, or for 
the sake of anything but Christ. And I pray the Son of God to 
have Compassion on you.” 47 

Different again, is “The Doctrine of Divine Providence,” 
published in 1684.4 It forms, in some ways, an introduction 
to Mather’s most widely read book. It expounds the doctrine 
that ‘“‘the God of Heaven has an over-ruling hand of Providence 
in whatever cometh to pass in this world.” 4° “There are some 
events of providence in which there is a special hand of Heaven 
ordering of them.” Such are remarkable preservations and 
deliverances, remarkable judgments upon men, amazing changes 
in the world or in particular nations. The existence of Provi- 
dence is proved from the very existence of the universe. “A 
Wheel must have an Hand to guide it or it will presently Turn 
out of the way and fall to the ground.”’ Apparent contradictions 
to natural law are manifestations of God’s will. ““Hence see the 
reason why little inconsiderable things do occasion great matters to 
be brought to pass amongst men in the world. It is because he that 
sits upon the throne doth wonderfully over rule all. He maketh 
little matters like the small wheel of a clock which sets all the rest 
a-going or like the hinges of a great gate upon which all turns.” 
The works of God are wonderful, even the action of natural laws. 

46. See MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 111, 123-126. 

47. Pp. 25, 18, 19, 35 (second ed. 1687). 

48. The full title is: “The Doctrine of Divine Providence Opened and Applyed: 


Also Sundry Sermons on Several other Subjects.” Boston 1684. 
49. Title of chap. 1. 


ee ee — 


THE FLIGHT TO ENGLAND 167 
“That Law and Course of Nature which He hath Established in 


the world, is a great and marvellous work. His ordering of Times 
and Seasons, Heat and Cold, Seed-Time and Harvest, Summer 
and winter, Day and Night in their several Vicissitudes, These 
are wonderful works.” He adds a truly Gilbertian collection 
of cases in which “‘the punishment fits the crime.”’ God punished 
New England for her abuse of the Indians, by a cruel war. 
Obviously man must avoid the judgments of Providence by 
adhering to the will of God. Sins of omission are as dangerous as 
those of commission. Hence the colony is in danger. “And is 
not Mercy neglected too?... mercy to the souls of men is neg- 
lected.” Once more there is a plea for church discipline and 
family prayer, and an argument ad hominem. “And why do men 
amongst us neglect prayer and reading the Scriptures in their 
Families, and in their Closets... but because of their worldly 
Incumbrances? Again Carnal Fears, and a sinful Bashfulness 
have a great influence into mens neglects of duty. Why don’t 
they make a profession of Religion? They are afraid they shall 
be accounted Hypocrites, or that some of their old vain com- 
panions will deride them.” The final note is not one of fear, or 
authority, but of the delight of serving God. Men should desire 
to live long to serve Him.*° 

Such teaching had long been stock in trade for good Puritans. 
In a day of growing interest in scientific observation, however, 
mere statement of truths or abstract doctrines did not satisfy. 
Here lies the root of Mather’s “Illustrious Providences,”’ * of all | 
his books thé most readable to-day, and of unequalled impor-_ 
tance, perhaps, for the student of his life and thought. | 

Few selections of early American prose, and few histories of 
American literature, pass it by. That it is marked by a style far 
better than that of the average colonial Puritan is often noted. 
Its importance as one of the few bits of evidence on the writing 
of narrative in the pioneer days of New England is mentioned 
also, though less frequently. But its significance as one of the 
first scientific writings in America, is, for the most part, neg- 
lected. 

Boek p.)2, 21, 22,20, 30, 45, 78,79, 98, 99, 107. 

§1. The full title is: “An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences: Where- 
in An Account is given of many Remarkable and very Memorable Events, which have 
happened in this last Age; Especially in New-England.” Boston, 1684. This was re- 
printed as “Remarkable Providences Illustrative of the Earlier Days of American 


Colonisation,” ed. by George Offor, London, 1856, and London, 1890. To this last 
edition all references here are made. 


168 INCREASE MATHER 


Here and there, of course, someone notes, as did Tyler and 
Poole, that there was a scientific inclination revealed in the 
method and material of the book. Very recently, Professor 
Murray of Dublin has gone comparatively far in upholding its 
place as an evidence, not of blind credulity, but of scientific 
progress in its day.5 Still, however, one finds selections from it 
usually concerned with the more incredible of the “providences ” 
described, and comments on it emphasize most often its useful- 
ness as a clue to the superstitious views of its writer.4 To read 
such selections, or to try to gain to-day an idea of the book, 
without going to its pages, is to form an impression far wide of 
the truth. 

In the first place, one needs only to read the book to discover 
that it is not a mere defence of, or treatise upon, witchcraft.® 
The historical echoing of the Salem delusion, which occurred a 
decade after the ‘‘Illustrious Providences” was written, has 
made most interesting to historians those pages which deal with 
witches. Discovering that in Mather’s book he considered witch- 
craft and apparitions, together with all the other wonders of New 
England, some writers have been prone to forget all else in favor 
of those pages which treated this peculiarly malignant phase of 
colonial superstition. Yet, after all, witches and witchcraft fill 
but a small part of the volume, and all that Mather said of such 
phenomena is supported by authorities who then were still 
authorities. In no way does he go beyond the scientists of his 
time, who, generally speaking, believed in witches, and regarded 
demonology as a legitimate field for scientific research. This has 
been made so clear by Professor Kittredge and others, that one 
need not go into it here.*° Suffice it to repeat, that witchcraft is 
but one of many topics treated in the “Illustrious Providences, ” 
and that it is treated, by seventeenth-century standards, sanely. 

What was the main theme of the book? We are more fortunate 

52. Cf. M. C. Tyler, History, 1,73; W. P. Trent, History of American Literature, 
p. 73 (which speaks of Mather’s “by no means feeble style”); and W. F. Poole, in 
Memorial History of Boston, ii, 158,159. Tyler says, “It cannot be denied that the 
conception of the book is thoroughly scientific; for it is to prove by induction the actual 


presence of supernatural forces in the world.” 

53. Cf. R. H. Murray, Dublin University and the New World. See especially, pp. 57, 
58. 

54. Cf., for example, Trent, History, p. 73. 

ss. Cf, W. Walker, Ten New England Leaders, p. 201; but see reference to Poole, 
cited in note 52, ante. 

56. Cf. G. L. Kittredge, Notes on Witchcraft. 


THE FLIGHT TO ENGLAND 169 


than literary investigators are wont to be, in that, in this case, 
we know just why, and with what aim, the book was written. 
In 1681, at a ministerial convention, Increase Mather suggested 
that a collection be made of instances in which God’s hand had 
revealed itself in New England.‘7 The value of such a compila- 
tion was obvious. It would support, more convincingly than 
anything else could, the truth of the Puritans’ cherished doctrine 
that God punishes or rewards sinners and saints by direct acts of 
providence revealed upon earth. It would accord with the trend 
of the day in substituting for collections of Divine Judgments, 
culled from standard histories, narratives of similar manifes- 
tations actually observed on colonial soil. It is this feature of 
the plan that marks it first as scientific — its reliance upon ob- 
servation. It was an effort to supply from experience facts from 
which might be derived, by induction, a theory already abun- 
dantly proved by written authority. 

That such a view is not reading too much into Mather’s design, 
is proved by a glance at the author, and what he said of his work. 
He was, throughout his life, keenly interested in current science. 
We have seen that he took an advanced position in regard to 
comets, admitting earlier than most of his brethren the posst- 
bility that they were governed by natural law, and accepting 
definitely a scientific fact which, we are told, was fatal to the 
theological view of such heavenly bodies, and, therefore, to be 
shunned by divines. We have read of his Philosophical Society 
in Boston. He bought and read the newest scientific books, 
and imported to the colonies at least one new invention of in- 
genious Samuel Morland. Moreover, one may not forget that 
after he was eighty years old he joined his son in the highly 
unpopular cause of inoculation. Even so, he might, of course, 
have been content to be unscientific in the “Illustrious Provi- 
dences,” where there were theological axes to grind. He puts 
doubt to rest, however, for, after rehearsing the plan of his book 
and explaining how much, perforce, has been left unsaid, he 
adds: ‘“‘I have often wished that the Natural History of New- 
England might be written and published to the world; the rules 
and method described by that learned and excellent person 
Robert Boyle, Esq., being duely observed therein.” He would not 

57. C. Mather, Magnalia, book VI, section 1; I. Mather, Danger of Apostasy (in 


1685 ed. of Call from Heaven), pp. 98, 99. 
58. Cf. his diaries, and J. H. Tuttle, The Libraries. 


170 INCREASE MATHER 


decline the task himself, did his other duties permit him to under- 
take it. Now Boyle’s rules for the writing of “‘ Natural History”’ 59 
are as sane now as when they were written, and Mather’s refer- 
ence to them, coupled with his explanation that the “Illustrious 
Providences” was less complete than he would have liked, and 
but an essay toward a larger work,°®° makes it quite clear that 
his aim was not purely theological. He would write scientific 
natural history, and, no doubt, believed he had done so. And his ~ 
contemporaries were not likely to question it, though we, with 
two centuries’ more training, may find tault with every page.\ 

In the first place, then, Mather’s book was written as a scien- 
tific and _ historical recording of phenomena observed in New 
England. True, it aimed at religious instruction, but how much 
of an advance it represents over other books of the time written 
with the same purpose is seen first in that it deals chiefly with 
New England, or with events of which New Englanders had direct 
information; and, second,-in that its basis 1s not written author- 
ity, but observation. On both these points it differs radically in 
method from similar works of edification. 

This is best seen in a glance at one or two such books. Mather 
knew, for example, Samuel Clark’s “‘Mirrour or Looking-Glass 
both for Saints and Sinners,” which reached its fourth edition in 
1671. Its title explains its contents: “The wondrous workes of 
God in Nature, and the curious, costly, and stupendious workes 
made by Man, with the cheifest curiosities of antient and moderne 
times.”’ A similar volume was the same author’s “Looking-glass 
for Persecutors; containing Multitudes of Examples of God’s 
Severe, but Righteous Judgments, upon bloody and merciless 
Haters of his Children in all Times, from the beginning of the 
World to this present Age. Collected out of the Sacred Scrip- 
tures, and other Ecclesiastical Writers, both Ancient and 
Modern.” Its second edition came out in 1675. We have found 
also, in Mather’s library, ‘“The Theatre of God’s Judgements,” 
by Thomas Beard and Thomas Taylor. The sub-title describes 
it as “‘a Collection of Histories out of Sacred, Ecclesiasticall, 
and Prophane Authors, concerning the admirable Judgements 
of God upon the transgressours of his commandments.” Again, 


59. Philosophical Transactions, 1665, 1666, vol. i, no. 2, pp. 186-189; R. Boyle, 
Works, ii, uff. 
60. Preface. 


61. Cf. Mather’s diaries; and, for Clark, DNB. 


THE FLIGHT TO ENGLAND TT 


we know that he owned “A World of Wonders,” by ‘“‘Henrie 
Stephen.” The tales in this book obviously adapted themselves 
to the ends of Puritan preachers. Later than the “Illustrious 
Providences”’ one remembers, too, Sinclair’s “‘Satan’s Invisible 
World Discovered,” published in England in 1685. Its preface 
declares that all its stories ““may be attested by Authentick 
Records, or by famous witnesses.”’ Therefore, “‘what belief can 
be given to any human histories, and matters of Fact, related by 
famous Writters, as much may be given to these .. . Relations.” 
In 1697 William Turner printed his “Compleat History of the 
Most Remarkable Providences, Both of Judgment and Mercy, 
which have Hapned in this Present Age. Extracted from the Best 
Writers, the Author’s own Observations, and the Numerous 
Relations sent him from divers Parts of the Three Kingdoms.” 

It is plain that only the last-mentioned of these books comes 
near Mather’s use of up-to-date local observations rather than 
old writers, and Turner makes it clear that he considered Mather 
his predecessor in the field. The author of the “TIllustrious 
Providences” went beyond the other contemporaries and suc- 
cessors we have looked at, and was more consistent even than 
Turner in his use of the stories of eye-witnesses rather than printed 
accounts in books. For example, Turner tells some stories be- 
cause he finds them in Mather. Mather, on the other hand, nine 
times out of ten based his relations on what had been seen and 
directly reported to him, or upon what he himself had had oppor- 
tunity to observe. Of course, his purpose was in part that of 
Clark, Beard, Taylor, and the rest. He wished to point a moral, 
but he chose a method most favored in his day by scientists, and 
not generally employed in the pulpit. He deserves a place, not 
with superstitious divines, but on the same plane with Glanvill 
and Dr. Henry More, who were serious students in “psychical 
research,” and seekers for empirical proof of what had hitherto 
been forced upon men’s minds by authority alone.® 

Written with such a method, the book is, briefly summarized 
for convenience, a collection of narratives of New England hap- 
penings. They are classified by subject. There are accounts of 
“Sea Deliverances,” “Remarkable Preservations” from dangers 
of various sorts, and stories of the vagaries of thunder and light- 

62. See Turner’s foreword, “To the Courteous Reader.” 


63. Cf. DNB, articles “Joseph Glanvill,” “(Henry More”; also, H. S. and I. M. L. 
Redgrove, Foseph Glanvill and Psychical Research in the Seventeenth Century. 


72 INCREASE MATHER 


ning. There are “Philosophical Meditations” on such scientific 
topics as the theory of lightning, of magnetism, and of “Anti- 
pathies and Sympathies” in nature. The supernatural is dis- 
cussed, and witchcraft. An argument for the existence of 
“Demons and Possessed Persons” and “‘Apparitions’’ follows, 
and one notes that here, as elsewhere, the existence of marvels is 
not upheld simply because historians vouch for them, or because 
they have Scriptural authority, but because they are supported 
by the products of what was, however crude and prejudiced, still 
the “psychical research” of interested observers of the time. The 
next chapter, most often neglected, does not preach superstition, 
but attacks it, laying bare the hollowness of many popular 
beliefs. Then comes a series of stories of the wonders wrought 
by and for the deaf and dumb, tales of ‘“‘remarkable tempests,’ 
of “Judgements,” and, finally, a section on “some events at 
Norwich.” 

The materials for all this were gathered by the approved 
modern “questionnaire”’ method,” and in most cases Mather’s 
‘sources are verbal relations of eye-witnesses, or letters from ob- 
servers outside of Boston. And, though it is easy to be struck 
by the sprinkling of incredible fables, the reader cannot ignore 
the fact that much of what is told is by no means beyond belief. 
We still know of remarkable escapes from shipwreck, or perils 
on land, and we still write of them. We still know that the deaf 
and dumb can be taught to speak and hear. 

_ We do not, however, use such facts to support religious doc- 
Jtrines, and Mather did. In this lies the first archaic element of 
the book. Yet it by no means clouds the accuracy of many of 
the observations recorded. A grave defect, however, is the un- 
critical use of evidence. A story told as true by a Puritan divine 
in New England was, for Mather, sufficiently vouched for. The 
testimony of witnesses passed current with too little investiga- 
tion of their skill as observers, or their devotion to truth. Hence 
the book is not proof against scepticism of later days. Yet we 
may not forget that Mather showed rudimentary critical ability,° 
and that the seventeenth century’s view of what was evidence 
was not ours. In addition, marvels are most often told of remote 


64. Preface to [//ustrious Providences. 

65. He is careful to say that “ircumstantial mistakes” may have crept in, though 
he has tried to print things of the truth of which he was “well assured” and about which 
he has received “credible” information. See I/lustrious Providences, Preface. 


THE FLIGHT TO ENGLAND 173 


lands, and remoteness can be measured only in the time taken 
for travel to the place in question. Thus, in the New England of 
1684, where transportation was no more advanced than in pagan 
Rome, an event at Lynn was considerably removed in time from 
an investigator in Boston. English scientists believed in 
miracles of nature related as happening in China, though they 
would have known they were false if they were reported to have 
occurred in London. So Mather, distant from the scenes of some 
of the events he wrote of, was handicapped in investigating their 
truth, and was the more ready to credit them because they took 
place in parts of the country he did not know. That this tendency 
in him was shared by good scientists, and that he was not unduly 
credulous by their standards, becomes clear when one glances at 
the transactions of the Royal Society for these years. One finds 
there a willingness to credit many strange tales told of distant 
lands; and even in regard to English observations, one must 
suspend one’s critical faculties quite as much to read a volume of 
the “Philosophical Transactions,” as to read the “Illustrious 
Providences.” *7 Indeed, some of the contents of this book, and 


66. “The occupation of three whole days in a visit from Boston to Salem, by fords 
and on foot, gives an impressive picture of the locomotion of that early period [1631] 
of the colony.” Memorial History of Boston, i, 118. 

67. In the General Index or Alphabetical Table, to all the Philosophical Transactions, 
from the Beginning to Fuly, 1677 (London, 1678), one finds, for example, these items: 

(i) “Animals drink very little, some not at all, in the hotter countries.” 

(2) “Porcupins kill Lions by shooting quills.” 

(3) “The Blood of the Negro’s is black, which seems to be the cause of their black 
skin.” 

(4) “A man relieved from inveterate and outrageous madness by the blood of a 
aalf,’ 

(5) ‘Flames and flashes from the sea.” 

(6) “Lakes turning Copper into Iron, and causing storms when anything is cast 
into them.” 

(7) A paragraph of entries on monstrous births, including “A Calf deformed, and a 
great Stone found in a Cows womb.” 

(8) “A Nutmeg, called thieving, one alone put into a whole Room-full of Nutmegs 
corrupts them all.” 

(9) “A Stone of excellent vertues found in the head of a serpent in the Indies.” 
(“This stone will extract poison from wounds, and, if put into milk, will give up the 
poison again.’’) 

(10) “Rain, how caused or attracted by Woods and certain trees.” 

(11) “Rain in a vale of Jamaica turns suddenly into Maggots, as it fails upon Gar- 
ments.” 

(12) “Scotland: Extracts from thence about extraordinary Winds there, Lakes, 
Frosts, a petrifying Water.” 

(13) “Serpents, having an head on each end of the Body.” 

One notes that in the case of (1), (2), (3),-(9), (11), and, to a lesser degree, (13), 
credulity is aided by the remoteness of the events. 


174 INCREASE MATHER 


much similar material, was communicated to, and considered 
by the Royal Society nearly thirty years later.** And we must 
see the Royal Society, none the less, as abreast of the science of 
its day. 

It is quite unjust, too, to think of Mather’s book as one which 
absorbed indiscriminately every proffered tale. He states ex- 
. pressly that he has tried to print only matters of the truth of 
which he is ‘“‘well assured,’”’ and about which he has received 
“ credible” information.©? Moreover, one of his wildest stories, 
sharply ridiculed in recent years as a proof of his “‘stupid 
credulity,” is not included in the body of his book, but relegated 
to the preface,7° with the simple comment that it is from a manu- 
script sent to him — and sent, be it noted, by a man of some 
scientific reputation in England. Mr. Drake assures us that 
these things Mather “believed... implicitly.” The most he 
says, however, is that they are contained in the manuscript; and, 
as we have seen, he denieS them a place in the body of his work. 
To twist this into a statement of implicit belief, is a considerable 


feat: 
Furthermore, Mather was not without enemies, some of whom 


In the Philosophical Transactions, vol. xiii (1683), pp. 93, 94, we read of a murrain 
in Switzerland, imputed by some to witchcraft, but “more probably from some Noxious 
Exhalations thrown out of the Earth, by three distinct Earthquakes perceived here... 
in the Space of one year.” 

On p. 169 of the same volume we learn how a man “‘had some of the organic parts 
of his body transformed into, or affected after the nature of a Dog.” 

In vol. xiv (1684), we learn how the Trade Winds are caused by the “breath” of 
sea plants (p. 489), that ““Thunder and Lightning owe their matter from the sole 
breath of the Pyrites” (pp. 518, 519), that in some places it has rained iron, copper, 
stones, but not silver or gold (p. 518). There is nothing harder to swallow in the 
Illustrious Providences. It is difficult to see why Mather is called superstitious, and the 
Royal Society scientific. 

68. See Cotton Mather’s letters to the Royal Society in 1712, copies of which are 
among the Gay Transcripts in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society; 
and G. L. Kittredge, ‘“‘Cotton Mather’s Scientific Communications to the Royal So- 
ciety,’ American Antiquarian Society Proceedings, xxvi, 18ff. 

69. Preface. 

40. S. G. Drake, in his Early History of New England, pp. xviii, xix, refers to this 
story. It is found in the preface to the //ustrious Providences. 

71. All Mather says of the story is: “One strange passage more I shall here relate 
out of the MS. which we have thus far made mention of.” But Drake says “this cir- 
cumstance ... though it came second hand to our Author he believed ... implicitly” 
(op. cit). Mather had the manuscript from John Davenport, and says he believes that 
it came originally from “‘Mr. Hartlib.”” Samuel Hartlib, friend of Milton, Marvell, and 
Boyle, was “intimately acquainted with the small group out of which grew the Royal 
Society.”” He wrote much on agriculture. See DNB, article “Samuel Hartlib (d. 
1670).” 


THE FLIGHT TO ENGLAND 175 


criticized his book. Had it contained matters incredible to them, 
or errors of fact they could detect, they would surely have has- 
tened to expose them. Instead, we find indignant critics ques- 
tioning not the truth of certain stories, but their application to 
their sect,” and the indefatigable Robert Calef, though he is 
sceptical in 1700 as to the old doctrine of “remarkable provi-\ 
dences,” pokes no holes in Mather’s facts.73 

It is often forgotten, too, that Mather did not merely collect 
evidence, but wrote some of his own reflections on scientific 
matters.” He was not a Newton or a Boyle, but there was only 
one of each. He was not a great original thinker in science, but 
he was an intelligent reader of men who were. So, if he upholds 
the belief that the Devil causes thunderstorms (p. 88), no more 
unreasonable, perhaps, than the view that the source of such 
tempests lay in “pyrites,” a theory seriously considered by the 
Royal Society,’> he also decries as superstition the hanging of 
horseshoes over doors, or the use of herbs and charms to drive 
away spirits.” He frankly declares that many stories of witch- 
craft are false (p. 124). He discusses magnetism, and other 
scientific topics of the day, and wisely supports his ideas by ref- 
erences to current writers who were leaders in contemporary 
science. Among the names thus cited, one notes, of course, the 
contributors to the “Philosophical Transactions” of the Royal 
Society. He refers also to Kenelm Digby, Kepler the astronomer, 
Thomas Browne and his “Vulgar Errors,’ Boyle’s experiments 
recorded in his “Usefulness of Natural Philosophy,” the “‘ Philo- 
sophical Conferences of the Virtuosi of France,” 77 the “ Ephem- 
eridum Medico-Physicarum Germanicarum,” 7 pioneer learned 
scientific journal in Germany, the books of Glanvill, and of Dr. 
Henry More, together with a host of others. Many of them had 
recognized scientific standing in 1684, and no one of them was 
outlawed by the learned world of that year. 

72. Mather’s tales of the Quakers were answered by George Keith in his Presby- 
tertan and Independent Visible Churches, pp. 214-230, as well as by John Whiting in 
Truth and Innocency Defended, pp. 132-135; but they do not question the truth of the 
events recorded, confining themselves to a denial that the participants were Quakers. 

73. See Robert Calef, More Wonders of the Invisible World, ii, 108ff. 

74. Illustrious Providences, chap. 4. 

75. Cf. note 67, ante. 76. Chap. 8. 

G7 leh S Coll, series 3, X, 71. 

78. “Miscellanea Curiosa Medico—Physica Academic Nature Curiosorum, sive 


Ephemeridum Medico-Physicarum Germanicarum Curiosarum.” ‘The first volume is 
dated “Lipsiae, 1670,” and the publication continued regularly thereafter. 


176 INCREASE MATHER 


Even from so brief a sketch as this, touching only one or two 
features of the book, and neglecting altogether the fruitful ques- 
tions as to how Mather selected from the material offered him, or 
how he treated narrative in writing up the stories told him, there 
is enough to lead one to reread the “Illustrious Providences.” 
Where else can one turn in seventeenth-century America to find 
the same use of the most recent scientific publications: How 
many English Puritans wrote with the same grasp of such ma- 
terial? In all the books which collect remarkable occurrences, for 
purposes of religious teaching, where is one with so little depend- 
ence on mere traditional authority, or one so truly scientific in 
its preoccupation with events, not as retailed in books, but as 
seen by men in a given part of the world and in modern times 
Admit, of course, that the theological point of view sometimes 
gives Mather theories far from ours; confess that he was too un- 
critical in his use of evidence, and one still faces the fact that he 
was abreast of his time, that he chose his method soundly, that 
much of his material still has value, that he was familiar with 
more than one point of up-to-date science, and that he suc- 
ceeded in his attempt to write a real chapter of New England 
history. Best of all, we have the answer to the old riddle as to 
why a man so sagacious in statecraft was stupidly credulous in 
other matters.7? We can reconcile the book with the man, as his 
deeds reveal him, only when we read what he wrote in reference 
to his contemporaries, and see that in method and material he 
is treating, for the most part, not superstition, but science. We 
may add, then, to the importance of the “Tllustrious Provi- 


_/ dences” as a literary work, its importance as a leader among 


works of “popular science” in America. And, if its own signifi- 
‘cance does not justify our noticing the book thus, the reflection 
that it appears in its true colors only when read in connection 
with the world and life whence it sprang, is in itself of value. 
Only by such reading can any Puritan writer of America, be he 
witch-finder or Indian missionary, politician or religious theorist, 
win his due from critics of to-day. 

- Aside from the scientific interest of the book, few of its pages 
can be dull to the antiquarian, the seeker after the curious in 
narrative, or the student of folklore. There is, moreover, much 
good story-telling, and always a certain sharpness and directness 
in the recital of facts. There is, when we compare his narratives 


79. Cf. S. G. Drake, Early History, p. xviii. 


THE FLIGHT TO ENGLAND 177 


with the original versions as they came to him,*° proof of editorial 
skill and the seal of a historian with a respect for sources. In 
style the book has the good qualities of Mather’s early historical 
writing, and suffers less from marks of haste. Whatever its 
faults, Benjamin Franklin would not have been ashamed to own 
some pages of the “Illustrious Providences.” Any New England 
writer of the day would have been proud to sign it; and in Eng- 
land there were few in the seventeenth century who wrote narra- 
tive with more simplicity and strength of phrase. 

More and more Mather must have been called from his study 
by the claims of his church. With new religious rivals, no meet- 
ing-house of the old Congregational way could afford to be 
without the best efforts of its teacher. Measured in terms of the 
new members admitted, the years 1684 to 1688 show a decrease, 
but by no means a stagnation of interest.** Mather’s preaching is 
revealed to some extent in his printed sermons, and faithful 
Samuel Sewall adds here and there an illuminating note. He 
tells us, for example, how Mather preached at the ordination of 
Charles Morton, although he disapproved of the form employed. 
As he grew older, he grew further and further away from the boy 
who had refused to recognize such an innocent rite as the wearing. 
of academic robes at Trinity College. : 

Obviously the church demanded his presence in Boston. Quite 
as obviously, the college across the river was too hopeful a plant 
to be left to wither. So, in 168s, after President Rogers left 
office, and after Joshua Moodey had been elected and had de- 
clined, one reads in the College records: ““The Reverend M' 
Increase Mather was requested to take special care for ye Gov- 
ernment of y*® Colledge, & for yt end to act as President till a 
further settlemt be orderly made.” It was a compromise by which | 
the strongest man Harvard could claim became virtually Presi- 4 
dent, though his first interest, his church, kept him from taking | 
up residence in Cambridge and becoming in fact the active con-. 
trolling force of the day-to-day work of the College. The salary | 
ordinarily paid to the President was now shared with John 

80, For such narratives see, for example, John Russell’s letter, Aug. 2, 1683, John 
Whiting’s, Dec. 4, 1682, and John Higginson’s, Aug. 22, 1682, allin MHS Coll., Series 4, 
hee this period 54 new members joined the Church. In the preceding five years 
there were 88, and in the five years before that, 72. Copy of original records, owned by 


the Church. 
82. MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 155. 


178 INCREASE MATHER 


Leverett and John Cotton, who were on the ground and were 
those “‘as have done y° work, y* appertains to y* President.” *® 
In the next year Dudley’s council appointed Mather “Rector”’ 
of Harvard, making Leverett and Brattle tutors.** In their 
hands was to be the actual management, while the “Rector” re- 
mained nominally the chief authority and continued his “usual 
visitations.” 

Under Increase Mather’s guidance the college developed 
greatly.*’ The advance of the times and the increase of popula- 
tion played a part, no doubt, but the new Rector carried Harvard 
through troubled days and left it more securely established than 
he found it. For the present the problem was one of its very 
existence. Harvard drew its being from a charter of the old 
colonial government, and that was no more. If, under the new 
régime, titles to individual holdings, conferred under the old 
government, were invalid, surely Harvard might fear lest the 
sole legal basis for its establishment be declared but a scrap of 
paper. Dudley, fortunately, was Puritan enough and New Eng- 
lander enough to know that any radical attack on the college by 
the royal authorities would have been a sure road to popular 
disfavor. His making Mather Rector points to his desire to keep 
the old order at Harvard; and that there was no change under 
Andros shows that he, too, had political tact. 

At the same time, Mather was awake to the danger, and took 
precautions against it. The Treasurer of the College was his friend 
and sympathizer, John Richards. He wrote in one of his account 
books: ‘'1686, October 22. I tooke care againe of the Colledge 
stocke p psuasion of mt Dudley, m? Stoughton & m: Incr. 
Mather, & rec4 of mt Sam! Nowell, the late Treasurer, the severall 
Papers underneath written, & am ordered to new make all the 
Obligations, mortgages, &c., & take them in myne owne name, as 
by one Instrument of this date signed between us Interchangably 
appears.” ® Here was preparation for undue official interest in 
the college’s titles to its holdings. Again, in the next year, another 
interesting transaction is recorded. Richards kept an account 
headed: ‘‘Stocke belonging to Harvard Colledge att Cambridge.” 
“Stock is credited with moneys received by him, and charged 


83. Harv. Rec., pp. 76, 77, 78; 79 257: 

84. J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, 11, 179. 
85. J. Quincy, History, especially i, 38. 

86. Colonial Society Publications, 1, 183 ff. 


V 


THE FLIGHT TO ENGLAND 179 


with his disbursements. On the first day of August, 1687, the 
credit entries footed up £130 115. On that day he paid out ‘for 
recording mortgage to m? Dudley,’ £1. 8s. and ‘to another for 
bonds, &c,’ 13s., making £2 15. This amount when added to 
previous disbursements apparently left in his hands £19 11s., 
which he paid over to Increase Mather. The entry in explana- 
tion of that payment is carefully erased, but the debit items are 
posted up, making ... an exact balance. ... An explanatory entry 
is made on each page to this effect: “Thus farr an Accompt was 
demanded by S: Edm? Andros & delivered to him.’”” The royal 
governor clearly insisted on his right to inspect the college books, 
and quite as plainly the payment of “Colledge Stocke”’ to 
Increase Mather shows that he was ready to shoulder, as an 
individual, the task of defending Harvard’s property.*7 While he 
thus prepared for any invasion of the college’s material holdings, 
he petitioned publicly, with Leverett and Brattle, “that the said 
Colledge may be confirmed in the hands it has bin in, & that they 
may have the same power which formerly they had,” namely “‘to 
make laws for the government of their own Society, & to dispose 
of all moneys given, or that should be given, ”’ and, if necessary, 
“to chuse another President, Fellow, or Treasurer.”’ °° 

Apparently there was no effort to upset this scheme of things, 
and it does credit to the new government that there was none. 
Unmolested, Harvard continued its work. The Rector, devoting 
most of his time to his Boston church, rode out to Cambridge 
once or twice a week, going on horseback by way of the Charles- 
town ferry.*® He was serving in a position he had not sought.” 
He had refused it more than once, and after he took office, he 
threatened, in 1686 and 1687, to resign.°° Yet he remained faith- 
ful to his trust, perhaps because there was no one else, perhaps 
because he felt that in troublous times experience counted heavily. 
He published a catalogue of graduates, a work of obvious his- 
torical importance.* At the request of Governor Dudley, he 
examined his son for entrance to the college.®? And we are told 
that, at the Commencement in 1686, after his son Nathaniel had 
given a Hebrew oration, the Rector “‘after giving the Degrees” 

87. Colonial Society Publications, i, 206. 

88. MHS Coll., Series 4, vill, 113, 114. 

89. J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, 1, 597. 

90. MHS Proc., xxxiii, 257; MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 315. 


g1. Colonial Society Publications, xvii, 232. 
92. MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 484. 


180 INCREASE MATHER 


spoke “in Praise of Academical Studies and Degrees” and the 
“Hebrew tongue.” % 

Whatever problems of scholarship were involved in such an 
inaugural, a different problem, and more subtle dangers, pre- 
sented themselves at the Commencement of 1687. To this came 
His Excellency Sir Edmund Andros, with his chaplain, Mr. 
Ratcliffe, who “‘sat in the Pulpit by the Governour’s direction.” 
As the “Eleven Bachelors and Seven Masters proceeded,” there 
was need for all Mather’s urbanity.%* Andros’s presence marked 
the interest in the college of a royal government presumably 
unsympathetic with its standards. A Church of England clergy- 
man in the pulpit was a further omen of evil to Puritan supporters 
of Harvard. At the same time, Mather and his colleagues held 
office by Andros’s tolerance, and to oppose him publicly, or to 
treat him otherwise than courteously, must have been to expose 
the college to grave risk: So, though the Rector took good 
care to pray “forenoon and afternoon,” apparently leaving the 
English chaplain no time to be heard, he must also have treated 
the Governor to some of the tact and courtesy which made pos- 
sible in the next few years his personal appeal to men of all classes 
and tempers in England. 

Diplomacy was needed for a man in Mather’s position, even in 
the conduct of his daily life, in the Boston of 1683 to 1688. To 
become a mere defender of the charter, an opponent of the new 
government, or to remain content with preaching against what 
seemed to him the imported vices of the day, could have won him 
the support of but one party, the loyal Puritan church members. 
On the other hand, to accept the new order passively would have 
been to sacrifice for the approval of Andros not only the respect 
of the “faithful” in New England, but also the good-will of the 
man in the street, who found ground for complaint in such 
material burdens as the new taxes. To withdraw entirely from 
public affairs, to become a sequestered student and writer in a 
time of popular excitement, would have been to give up the basis 
of his prestige, personal influence among the people. Actually, 
his course avoided, on the one hand, open rupture with the new 
authorities, or too outspoken opposition to them, while, at the 

same time, he left no doubt as to the strength of his belief in the 
“rights” of New England. Accordingly, he appeared to the — 
church member or the disgruntled layman as the leader of — 


93. MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 85. 94. Ibid., 181. 











SIR EDMUND ANDROS 


THE FLIGHT TO ENGLAND 181 


ability and prudence, ready to serve when opportunity arose, and 
to the Governor and Council he seemed an opponent whose 
moderation made rational dealings possible, and one whose un- 
doubted power in the town lent weight to his opinion. 

More than one event of these years makes this clear. In 1686, 
when the news of Dudley’s commission became known, “Mr. 
Phillips had very close Discourse with the President, to persuade 
him not to accept: ’t was in Mr. Willard’s Study Monday after 
noon just at night. Mr. Stoughton and Mather” were there, 
too.°> Later in the year, when the old question of using the British 
flag with the cross of St. George was raised once more, and again 
stirred the Puritans’ fear of Popery, Samuel Sewall staunchly 
refused to serve under the new colors. He “‘went and discoursed 
Mr. Mather,” who judged it sin to have the cross “put in,” but 
decided that Captain Eliot was “‘not in fault,’”’ inasmuch as he 
but acted under orders. Sewall’s scruples were not so easily over- 
come.” Man of affairs that he was, he lacked Mather’s insight 
into the fact that, as matters stood, resistance on minor points 
could serve no good end. When Andros arrived, in his “Scarlet 
Coat Laced,” a dinner was given in his honor, and at the table, 
gay with the English uniforms, ‘“‘Mr. Mather,” in his sober garb, 
“crav’d a Blessing.” 

A courteous guest at his table, Mather was none the less quite 
ready to oppose Andros on a question of import. The Governor 
asked for one of the Boston churches in which to hold the English 
service, but “Mr. Mather and Willard thorowly discoursed his 
Excellency ...in great plainness, showing they could not con- 
sent.” 97 Andros yielded at the time, though he chose soon after- 
ward to force his way into one of the meeting-houses, the use of 
which he had been refused. Once installed, his chaplain shared 
the building with the congregation which owned it, and, when 
their service followed his, the uninvited guests more than once 
kept the proprietors of the house waiting outside its doors.% 

95. MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 139. 

96. Lbid., 147, 148. 

97. Ibid., 162. 

98. Cf. MHS Coll., Series §, v, 172,177. J. T. Adams, The Founding, p. 421, speaks 
of the “inordinate length” of the Puritan sermons, and quotes a passage apparently 
intended to show that the length of the Puritan service interfered with the English 
church’s service. Sewall’s evidence is quite to the contrary. Prejudiced as he may have 
been, to draw the conclusion that the Puritans delayed the worship of Andros and his 


friends in the face of the story as told in his diary, is unsafe unless more evidence can 
be found to support such a view. 


182 


a 


INCREASE MATHER 


That no more resistance was shown is, perhaps, creditable to 
Boston. Certainly Mather’s contenting himself with mere pass- 
ing notes in his diary as to the affairs of the day,®® the while he 


took good care to preserve friendly relations with Dudley, to dine 
with Andros, and to avoid open hostility, points either to a broad- 
minded spirit of tolerance, or, at the least, to a prudent desire to 
bide his time. 

If to one English clergyman he seemed the force which led 
the people to opposition,’°° one remembers that the writer appears 
not only to have been a dissentient from New England’s church, 
but a violator of the orders of the colonial court. And when 
all is said and done, one may not forget that when the King’s 
declaration of liberty for all faiths reached Boston, Mather wel- 


Pe 


comed it." Had he been a foe of toleration, he could hardly have 


pursued the way he chose. Others, narrower in spirit, saw in the 


royal 


order but the opening of New England to Popery or 


‘Quakerism.?% It is not enough to explain Mather’s attitude by 
saying that he did not see that the king’s proclamation meant 
freedom, not only for Congregationalists, but for all. With as 
many sects as were represented in Boston, no dweller there can 
have been blind to what toleration implied. That Mather wel- 
‘comed it is one more confirmation of his son’s statement that he 
' progressed more and more throughout his life toward the ideal of 
- religious liberty. 

He was not content merely to give thanks himself. In June, 
1687, he suggested to the ministers in Boston that an expression 
of their gratitude be sent to James. He was commissioned to 
carry out the plan, and had the satisfaction of hearing from 
London “that it came very seasonably.” *** There seemed to 
be a chance here to build up strength for New England in public 
opinion abroad, and Mather continued the work. In October he 
suggested that “‘our churches, (and not the ministers only,) 
might thank the king for his Declaration, which was readily 
complied with by ten churches.” *°° By this time he had been 
warned by the narrower party that the king’s declaration was a 


99. Cf. MHS Proc., xxxiii, 399ff., June 6, 1686, and March 16 and April 17, 1687. 


100. 
IOI. 
102. 
103. 
104. 
105. 


Lbid., Mii, 512.3: 

MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 98 and n. 

Parentator, p. 102; Autobiography. 

MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 507, 508; T. Hutchinson, History, 1, 357, 358 and n. 
Autobiography. 

Ibid.; Parentator, p. 102; MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 697, 698. 


THE FLIGHT TO ENGLAND 183 


danger, not a benefit, to Congregationalism. Moreover, Andros 
had forbidden public demonstrations of rejoicing on the part of 
the churches.’ But, awake to what was involved, Mather knew 
that hope for the future lay not in clinging vainly to the dream of 


restoring the old exclusive Congregational control, but in facing, 


and accepting frankly, the newer ideal of tolerance, and, most | 
important for the moment, in reéstablishing in England the’ 


belief that Massachusetts was not a land of narrowness and per- 


secution, but the home of nonconformists of tolerant mind. No ~ 


single episode in his life displays more clearly the broadening of 
his views, and none reveals more clearly his political foresight. 


=o > 


can ae 


ie oe 


Beyond attack, perhaps, as the intolerant Puritan bigot, and — 


too cautious in his public dealings in the town to lay himself open 
to serious charges, he paid the penalty of prominence by becom- 
ing the object of lampoons from those who differed from him.?°7 
Most serious was the enmity of Randolph. On July 16, 1684, 
Mather wrote in his diary: “I being in some distress of spirit bec. 
I hear, yt. some ltrs wh I sent to Holland, are fallen into ye hands 
of ym at Whitehall.’’'°? He had good reason for alarm. He had 
written to friends abroad frank criticism of the royal attacks on 
the charter, and such letters in the hands of royal authorities 
might well bring him an unwelcome share of their interest.‘ 
But a knowledge of the facts turned his fear to anger.™° 

One George Rosse, “being lately in Amsterdam,” there found 
its way to him a letter from Boston which he “had time to copy,” 
and sent promptly to Edward Randolph.™ It contained matter 
perilously near sedition. It was dated December 3, 1683, and 
signed I. M."? To Randolph it was a treasure trove. At once 
he used it to build up hostility to Mather. To Samuel Shrimpton 
he wrote: “Mr. Mather, the Bellowes of Sedition & Treason has 
at last attained his end in setting his fools a horse-back.”’ He 
told Sir Leoline Jenkins of the letter, and when that gentleman 
referred to Mather as “that star-gazer: that halfe distracted 
man,” Randolph gleefully reported the conversation to Simon 

106. Parentator, p. 103. 

107. Autobiography, Aug. 29, 1684. 

108. MS. Diary, 1680-84. 

tog. Cf. his letters in MHS Coll., Series 4, vol. viii. 


110. For the documents in the matter of the forged letter, see Palfrey, iii, 556- 
§58n.; MAS Coll., Series 4, vill, loo-110; and C. W. Tuttle, Capt. Francis Cham- 
pernowne, pp. 295-310. 

111. Idid., pp. 295, 296. 

112. For the letter, see MHS Coll/., Series 4, viii, 104ff. 


Ga © 


184 INCREASE MATHER 


Bradstreet." Sir Roger L’Estrange ™ got wind of the affair, and 
in his ““Observator” entertained his readers with an onslaught 
on New England bigotry as personified in Increase Mather." 

The latter, once the letter was in his hands, recognized it as 
none of his. Whatever he had written, he promptly knew the par- 
ticular screed now in question to be a forgery. In his diary and 
autobiography, he declares the charge against him to be false. 
Later, he made the same statement in a printed work.™ If such 
evidence be thrown out, there remains the fact that such men as 
Nathaniel Mather in Dublin and Simon Bradstreet in Boston 
found it impossible to believe the letter to be genuine. The latter 
wrote Randolph: “my charyty is such, that though I am afraid 
that hee [Mather] might write something inconvenient to his 
ffriends, yet I cafiot think him soe foolish and absurd to write 
all that is contayned in that letter.”’"*7_ His contemporaries were 
not convinced of his guilt, and no one since has produced a shred 
of proof that the letter was his. Moreover, there are valid argu- 
ments against his authorship. Writing to Dudley, he displayed 
points of fact which marked the letter as not from his pen.* To 
quote: ‘‘The forger... represents me as a person well assured of 
Shaftbury’s happiness. ... They that are acquainted with me 
knowe that I never had an high opinion of that Gentleman. This 
manifests the letter to be a peece of forgery. .. . He pretends 
as if I sent to Amsterdam for the New Covenant of Scotland, 
Caril upon Job, and Mr. Owen’s last works. Now herein he has 
so grossly played the fool, soe as to discover the letter to be a 
meer peece of forgery. As for the new Covenant of Scotland, I 
never heard of such a thing, untill I saw it in this wicked letter, 
nor do I to this day vnderstand what is the meaning of it. Carill 
have been in my study this fiveteen years’’— and we know he 
read Carill in 1675-76— *9 “& if I had him not, it is likely that I 
should send to Amsterdam, for Mr. Carill & Doct. Owen’s works, 
which are here sould in Boston. I might obtaine them sooner and 
cheaper from London, then from Holland....He farther rep- 
resents me as that I knew by the signes in the Heavens, that 

113. MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 525, 528, 529. 

114. See DNB. 

115. Observator, Nos. 173, 174, 176, 177; Colonial Society Publications, xxiv, 313. 

116. I. Mather, The Greatest Sinners Exhorted, Preface. 

117. MHS Coll., Series 4, vili, 59, 533. 


118. [bid., 108-110, 
119. I. G. Wright, Literary Culture, pp. 130, 131. 


THE FLIGHT TO ENGLAND 186 


the heathens should destroye *° the whore of Babilon. . . . my 
judgement is declared in print express contradictory.” Against 
this there is no evidence except a copy of a letter signed I. M., 
and Randolph’s belief that these initials represented the signa- 
ture of his Puritan enemy. One need not go further to seek to 
disprove a charge for which no basis can be found. 

Unfortunately, Mather, sorely tried by the attacks made upon 
him in London and even in Barbadoes, did not content himself 
with writing to Dudley, or with the new solace he found in the 
Psalms.” In defending himself, he angrily accused Randolph. 
In his letter to Dudley he declared the forger was ‘“‘Randolph 
himselfe,” that Randolph was ‘“‘a great knave.’”’ Once he seems 
to grant the possibility that the doubtful honor of the forgery 
may belong to Bernard rather than to Edward Randolph.” But 
in attacking either, prudence failed him. He was facing oppo- 
nents likely to let no advantage slip. 

In December, 1687, therefore, Randolph secured a warrant 
for Mather’s arrest.23 Very probably he was led to this action 
by the knowledge that in October the churches had urged “that 


_ some one should go to London with their thanks to the King for 


his declaration of religious freedom,” and that several had sug- 
gested Mather for the task. He asked his church for permission, 
and “they unanimously consented.” ‘“‘My purpose for England 
was no sooner noised abroad,” he writes, “than Randolph... 
caused an officer to arrest me, (on Saturday, December 24).’’ ™4 
Whether news of his projected mission to England lay back of 
Randolph’s bringing suit, one cannot decide finally. Mather 
himself was sure of it,”5 and obviously any recital of the state of 
New England delivered in London by a man of his sympathies 
was likely to be wholly unflattering to Randolph. Whatever 
the motives behind it, the case came to trial on January 31. 
Mather had taken such legal advice as was to be had, and had 
written to Dudley, who was to judge him, a full statement of his 
position, insisting that he had believed, not Edward, but Bernard 
Randolph to be the author of the fraud. If one reads his letter, 
however, one cannot escape the feeling that, whatever he believed 

120. Mather refers here to his Kometographia, pp. 129, 130. 

121. Autobiography. 

122. MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 100ff. 

123. Ibid., 702; C. W. Tuttle, Capt. Francis Champernowne, p. 304. 


124. Parentator, pp. 103, 106; Autobiography. 
125. Lbid. 


186 INCREASE MATHER 


in his more rational moments, Mather, in his wrathful excite- 
ment, had by no means spared Edward.” 

At the trial ‘‘the overruling providence of God so ordered that 
there were but two Common Prayer-men of the jury, (where as 
it was thought all the jury would have been picked of such only 
to do me an ill turn;) & the whole jury cleared me, & Randolph 
was ordered to pay costs of court, instead of obtaining s00 lbs of 
me. which he hoped for.” 77 

Freed from the charge of defamation, he bent himself to pre- 
pare for England. Prayer and fasting, and premonitions of good 
service to be done for God, filled his days. He went boldly to 
Andros and told him of the voyage he planned. He “did also 
give notice of it to the whole country in a lecture Sermon on 
Fixeea seus ime 

Randolph was not yet downed. In Mather’s words: “Ed. 
Randolph, being assisted by Ben. Bullivant, the apothecary, who 
was then a justice of peace, (men whose names will stink in 
N. E. to the world’s end,) & others of that fraternity, doubting 
that I might make complaints to the king of their irregular pro- 
ceedings, especially of their contempt manifest of the king’s 
Declaration for Indulgence, to Dissenters in matters relating to 
conscience... caused an officer to go to my house with a design 
to arrest me in an action of scandal, on a pretended defamation 
of Randolph... but it so happened that I had taken some... 
physic that morning, which caused me to refuse to speak to the 
officer, although I knew nothing of his design.” "9 

Plainly, Randolph’s attempt to arrest Mather a second time 
had a motive deeper than a desire for damages. The case had 
been tried and settled, and Randolph’s cause had been lost. How 
he arranged for the second attempt at arrest we can only guess, 
but it is hard to doubt that he had an end in view. He had 
much to fear from Mather, should he ever reach England, and, 
more particularly, the king. It is not easy to question Mather’s 
conclusion that here was a deliberate effort to delay or prevent 
his departure from Boston. Indeed, the episode was so explained 
at the time, and the only answer offered was that Randolph did 

126. Autobiography; Parentator, p. 106; Tuttle, Capt. Francis Champernowne, pp. 
304 n., 305, 307, 308; MHS Coll., Series 4, vill, 112ff. 

127. Autobiography. 

128, Idid.; Parentator, p. 106; MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 206. 


129. Autobiography; Parentator, p.107; MS. Diary, March 27, 1688; MHS Coll., 
Series 5, v, 208. One remembers, of course, Hawthorne’s sketch of “Dr. Bullivant.” 


THE FLIGHT TO ENGLAND 187 


not know of Mather’s project and so could not have acted from a 
desire to detain him."*° That Edward Randolph was ignorant of 
what Andros had been told, of what had been publicly declared 
at a lecture, and discussed by the church members of the town, 
is credible only if we believe that a trained diplomat and a prac- 
tised observer of the smallest bubbles in the political broth, was 
as blind and as isolated from current talk as the dullest child in 
Boston streets. There remains only the obvious probability that 
he strove to check Mather’s sailing. It is interesting to remember 
the theory that one of the liberties bestowed on New England by | 
the Andros régime was freedom for all to go and come as they 
chose." Mather’s experience suggests that, in this respect, the 
privileges granted by the royal governor had more being on paper 
than in fact, and more charm for the twentieth century than for 
the seventeenth. 

Randolph’s agent left Mather’s door without serving his war- 
rant, but “within an hour there was a report in the town’”’ that 
the arrest had been made.** The news spread quickly, and 
came soon to Mather himself. For several days he kept behind 
closed doors. On March thirtieth, many of his church came, he 
writes, “desiring I wd not appear in Publick on ye Ld’s day, bec. 
wicked men were lying in wayt to apprehend me.” His mind was 
made up, and his heart was set on his voyage to England. It 
was a time to take no risks. 

That evening, about ten o’clock, he commended his family to | 
God, and bade them farewell. Putting on a wig and a long white | 
cloak, he went out into the darkness.%4 There waited one | 
Thurston, “one of Randolph’s creatures,’ guarding the house 
and hoping for a chance to arrest its owner. But the sight of the 
tall figure, clothed in white, was too much for him,™5 and, unaware 
of his presence, “the Metropolitan Clergy-man” *° of New Eng- 
land passed him in safety, and disappeared down the shadowy 
length of Middle Street. 


An hour later, Increase Mather was under Captain Phillips’s 


130. Andros Tracts, 1, 17, 52; MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 209. 
131. J. T. Adams, The Founding, p. 423. 

132. Autobiography; Parentator, p. 107. 

133. MS. Diary, March 30, 1688; Autobiography. 

134. Lbid. 

135. Lbid.; Parentator, p. 108. 

136. J. Dunton, Letters Written From New-England, p. 74. 


188 INCREASE MATHER 


hospitable roof in Charlestown." There he stayed throughout 
the next day. Meanwhile “‘Randolph’s emissaries were searching 
for” him ‘in many places.”” On April first several of the young 
men of the Second Church came to their teacher and urged him 
to find some safer hiding-place. With them, at midnight, he 
once more made use of darkness to cover his flight and made his 
way to a hut on Rumney Marsh.’** One more day he lay con- 
cealed there, and then, on April third, his faithful sons, Cotton 
and Samuel, the latter but a boy of thirteen, joined him. With 
friends they accompanied him to Pulling Point, where a ketch lay 
moored. On the shore he gave his blessing to Cotton, and, taking 
Samuel with him, put out to sea at dawn. Before night they 
reached the Gurnet, off Plymouth.*? 

For two longs days the ketch rode at anchor, or sailed idly up 
and down outside of the Pilgrims’ harbor. Aboard, Increase 
Mather and young Samuel, sick, and in cramped quarters, grew 
weary with waiting. At last, on April seventh, a little sail bore 
down on them. It was a shallop, from Boston, manned by their 
friends. They brought news that the ship on which the Mathers 
were to have sailed had left port. Promptly “the ketch wherein 
I was,” Increase writes, “sailed towards the ship.” Her spars 
traced against the late afternoon sky must have been a welcome 
sight, and when, about six o’clock in the evening the ketch tossed 
alongside her high bulwarks, Mather and his son clambered 
aboard eagerly enough.™° Once on deck, waving farewells to 
their friends in the ketch, and warmly welcomed by the master 
of the good ship President," they could breathe more freely. 
Randolph and his machinations were left far behind, where the 
shore of Massachusetts was fast fading into blank horizon. 
Ahead in the twilight lay the dangers of the sea, and the burdens 
of a difficult diplomatic quest. Mather’s face was turned toward 
an England greatly changed from that he had left a quarter of a 
century before, and his own mission was far weightier than any 


137. Autobiography; Parentator, p. 107. Phillips was Cotton Mather’s father-in- 
law. 

138. Autobiography; Parentator, p. 108. Rumney Marsh is now part of Chelsea. 
Sewall says (MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 210) that Mather went on April 1 to Aaron 
Way’s by Hogg-Island (the Hog Island of to-day). Cf. also, MHS Proc., xxvii, 138. 

139. Autobiography; Parentator, p. 108; MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 210; MS. Diary, 
1688, April 3, 4. 

140. Ibid., April 4, 5, 6,7; Autobiography. 

141. One Arthur Tanner. Idid.; MS. Diary, April 7, 1688; and MHS Coll., Series 5, 
V, 209, 210. 


THE FLIGHT TO ENGLAND 189g 


task he then had known. Then he had been a faithful preacher, 
bent on teaching the Word wherever he might find a peaceful 
living. Now he was an emissary, not to sedate Puritan congre- 
gations, but to a crowded and worldly royal court. Then he had 
only his own concerns in mind. Now there lay on his shoulders 
the weight of the colony’s hopes. 

By the time candles began to gleam from Boston windows 
that night, the news ran through the streets that Increase Mather 
was at sea.“ Randolph, hearing it, turned into Bullivant’s shop, 
perhaps, to pound his fist on the counter and speak a few angry 
words. But by more than one broad hearth that evening, good 
church members gave thanks. For Puritan or layman, mer-_. 
chant or divine, there was cheer in the knowledge that the case © 
of taxpayer against Andros, and of the property holders against 
the king’s officers, had been confided to an emissary of strong 
hands and a stout heart. 


142. Cf. MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 209, 210. 


CHAPTER Sa 


THE COURT OF JAMES THE SECOND 
iN oars a voyage which Mather declared was “‘comfortable,” 


in spite of torments from seasickness and toothache, and 
dangers from “‘islands of ice” and “sad Fogg,” the travellers on 
the President on May sixteenth left the ship to board a Wey- 
mouth boat which they sighted in the English Channel. In a few 
hours Mather and his son landed in England. Weymouth, 
Increase wrote, “was ye last town wch I saw in E[ngland]. & 
pvidence has so ord[ere]d yt it is ye first town wch (after 27 
years absence) I am agn brought unto.” * 
No troubles of the voyage were greater than those which faced 
a would-be diplomatic servant of the colonies in England in May, 
1688. Shoals of fog still hang here and there over the tangled 
political history of that year, and for Mather, no lawyer, and a 
representative simply of a few congregations, the task of doing 
real service for a Massachusetts by no means sure of its exact 
status, in a court torn by many factions, might well have seemed 
too heavy to undertake. Certain elements of the situation he 
had clearly in mind. He knew what “rights” he sought for the 
colony. He knew that James II, turning a wistful eye toward 
a vision of Catholic England, was opposed by the English church 
and nation, so far as they upheld constitutional government 
against arbitrary rule. He realized that the nonconformists, so 
long despised by statesman and prelate alike, were now courted 
by both.2 Their numbers, thrown on the king’s side, would 
have done much to steady his throne. The English church, which 
saw in the king’s first Declaration of Indulgence a lawless act, 
robbing it of its place as the authorized religious body, and found 
in the second royal proclamation of tolerance for all, equal de- 
fiance of constitutional rule, regarded an alliance of all English 
Protestants as the readiest weapon against tyranny and Rome. 
The Bishops’ refusal to allow the king’s most recent dictum to 


1. Autobiography; MS. Diary, April 17 to May 16, 1688. 
2. Autobiography; Parentator, p. 104. 





THE COURT OF JAMES THE SECOND IgI 


be read in the churches had brought matters to a head. The issue 
was sure to be influenced by the numbers enlisted on either side, 
and thus every Puritan became a man to be wooed assiduously 
by James’s favorites and orthodox churchmen. This much 
Mather saw, and he thanked God he had come when the king 
“and his ministers thought it their interest to be kind to Non- 
conformists.”” 3 

It was, none the less, far from plain sailing. The dissenters 
were divided as to how to receive the shower of fair words. 
Richard Baxter could not be bribed by sudden favor. Mather’s 
old friend, John Howe, newly returned from exile, and courted 
by King James, listened rather to the Hampdens, and chose the 
popular side. His vote carried with it those of most of the 
divines who had discussed the problems with him. On the other 
hand, Stephen Lobb, whose father and Nathaniel Mather had 
married sisters, ““a weak, violent and ambitious man,’ 4 had 
become a power at court through his willingness to serve as the 
king’s agent with refractory Puritans. Henry Care and Thomas 
Rosewell took the same course, and Vincent Alsop, a prominent 
divine, linked hands with them. Where men who had watched 
the turn of events in England day by day, and had even played 
their part in them, could not agree as to the path to take, what 
guide had a New Englander who had not seen London for nearly 
thirty years? 

To-day, of course, we see those Puritans who regarded alliance 
with the English church against the king as the best way to repel 
not only the agents of Rome but also royal attacks on popular 
rights, as men who chose with wisdom and foresight. The Decla- 
ration of Indulgence amounted to an overruling by royal decree 
of many laws legally established. The issue was not merely 
one of Protestant against Catholic, Puritan against prelate, but 
of constitutional prerogative against royal usurpation. Baxter 
and Howe chose the patriots’ way. Lobb and Alsop built on the 
shifting sand of royal promises made, in defiance of law, by a fast 
weakening monarch. At the same time, as we have seen, the same 
Declaration of Indulgence, so grave a danger for England, was 
for the New England colonists visible in a different light. There 
was littie peril from Catholicism in Massachusetts, and the 
constitutional rights of dwellers in England mattered little to 

3. Autobiography. 

4. T. B. Macaulay, History, chap. 7; MHS Coil., Series 4, Vill, 648 n., 651 n. 


/ 


192 INCREASE MATHER 


Boston citizens, provided they could have liberty for Congre- 
gationalism, and scope to continue their virtual autonomy. 

How Mather felt in his heart of hearts on the choice thus pre- 
sented between alliance with the English church, benighted as 
it seemed to him, and placid acceptance of privileges offered by 
a king who tolerated Puritans only that he might be free to aid 
their foes in Rome, is a question he took good care to leave un- 
answered. He came for a single object, the restoration of the 
Massachusetts charter. His only credentials were addresses of 
thanks to His Majesty for his first declaration of freedom for all 
creeds. Whatever his private views, as a diplomat he had but one 
resource. He must trade so far as might be upon the fact that 
New Englanders were Englishmen, and nonconformists; and so 
long as James II found dissenters useful to his ends, he must be 
reminded of his subjects in the colonies. If Mather were to 
espouse the cause of those hostile to the king, he must sacrifice 
any weight his words might have at court. So, although he dis- 
trusted all Catholics, however courteous, and dared not accept 
Father Petre’s services, feeling that to do so would be “next [to] 
going to the devil for help,” he adapted to his uses men of all 
views and ranks, received a welcome even from that “Goggle- 
Ey’d Monster,” bloody Judge Jeffreys, and kept his own views 
carefully concealed.’ Thus early he showed the diplomacy that 
made possible such success as he had in England. 

Arriving in London, with his son, late on May twenty-fifth, he 
was “kindly entertained” by Major Robert Thompson, at New- 
ington Green.® Samuel Nowell of Boston, ex-treasurer oft iHar- 
vard, who had come to England in December, 1687, was, of 
course, one of the first to greet him.’ On the twenty-eighth he 
“visited ye congregational ministers of London who mett”’ at 
Mr. Ford’s. The next afternoon he visited Stephen Lobb. The 
latter, true to his mission at court, told the king of Mather’s 
arrival, and, no doubt, suggested that nonconformity abroad as 
well as at home was worth catering to. King James lost no time 
and arranged that Mather should wait upon him the next day.® 

Mather arrived in London on Friday, and on Wednesday he 

5. Autobiography; Parentator, pp. 114, 115; Andros Tracts, iii, 141 n. 

6. MS. Diary, May 25, 1688. For Thompson, see T. Hutchinson, Collection, ii, 85, 
181, 207, and J. Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, iv, 287ff. 

7. MS. Diary, May 28, 1688; J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, 159%9 Shes 


8. Autobiography; MS. Diary, May 28, 29, 30. For “Mr. Ford” see DNB, “Stephen 
Ford,” and Nonconformist’s Memorial, iii, 121. 











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LONDON FROM SOUTHWARK IN 











| REIGN OF WILLIAM AND MARY 








THE COURT OF JAMES THE SECOND 193 


was in the presence of the king. He was not one to loiter in his 
quest. He waited for James in the Long Gallery at Whitehall,» 
so different from the Boston Townhouse, and a stage for actors 
who would have seemed quite out of place in the house of a 
Winthrop or a Leverett. Mather’s garb may have marked him at 
Whitehall, but the loyal followers of the king had grown used to 
welcoming the sober Puritan dress, which they had despised of 
yore, and in speech and learning their guest was likely to prove 
at least their equal. From the beginning of his agency he met 
ladies of the court, and men of all classes, and fared as well with 
them as with his Boston friends. Here, as there, the chronicle of | 
his visits, his dinings out, and his constant contact with the world, ° 
is voluminous."° 

The story of Massachusetts’ struggle for a charter covers the 
years from 1688 to 1692. In it alone there is material for a 
volume. To tell it with reference to all the interests, personali- 
ties, and consequences involved, demands more space than a 
biography of one of its actors can afford. The documents, pub- 
lished and unpublished, are legion, and many still lack places in 
any systematic bibliography or catalogue. For us, the central 
figure is Mather, the staunch New Englander, reared in a nur- | 


sery that might well have produced a mere religious zealot. For 


our purposes, the central thread in the history of these eventful 
years must be his relation to them. The story as he told it, and 
as his son repeated it after him, is our first interest. His letters, 
and those written to him, the notes in his diary, and the com- 
ments of such eager allies as Samuel Sewall, must be the chief 
sources of our knowledge. If we see what his problem was, how 
he met it, how far his contemporaries believed he succeeded or 
failed, we have what we need to understand the English agency 
as a stage in his career. Having that, we may leave to the his- 
torian of the period the detailed examination of many papers and 
the task of relating Mather’s agency to general English or Ameri- 
can history. He must decide its relation to later growth in 
political theory. If any fact contributes to our judgment of 
Mather as a man seeking a.goal beset by earthly obstacles, we 
may-not néglect it. If any factor in the general situation helped 
to determine’his thought or action, or makes it possible to judge 

g. Cf. E. Sheppard, The Old Royal Palace. It is not clear just what Mather meant 


by the “Long Gallery.” 
10. Cf. MS. Diaries. 


194 INCREASE MATHER 


him more fairly, it is essential. Beyond that, within the limits 
of biography one cannot go. 

As he waited in the Long Gallery, then, this Boston minister, 
formerly defiant of kings, foe of Catholics, and scorner of things 
of this life, first takes his place in the strange scene fortune had 
decreed for him. {Had he been the Puritan so often painted for us, 
pious, fanatical, and an intolerant dogmatist, had he not been 
able to overlook minor scruples in the pursuit of noble ends, had 
he not been able to recognize beneath the gay coats of the court 
the same human nature he had studied in his parish, or had he 
failed to conform to their standards enough to be acceptable to 
them, he might, perhaps, have been a more ideally perfect figure, 
but he would have lacked the human quality that made him a 
force in the world. Moreover, he would have been useless as a 
diplomat, and New Hampshire, Plymouth, Connecticut, Har- 
vard, and his own colony; all looking to him to win establish- 
ment for their futures, would have found him a broken reed. 
For the nonce, scholarship, divinity, and pious exhortation must 
be put aside. Only as a man able to use the slightest advantage 
given him by the character of the times or of those about him, 
always vigilant, and never forgetful of his aim, could he hope 
for progress. 

At eleven o’clock the king entered. Mather offered to kneel, 
but James, only too willing to flatter, forbade it.* The first card 
in the hand of New England was the Address of Thanks. Mather 
presented it, and, at the king’s request, read it aloud. He ex- 
plained that it represented some twenty congregations in New 
England, and then offered a second document, this time from 
Plymouth.” James was all graciousness. He expressed joy that 
his Declaration met favor in the colonies, and promised largely 
that they should have “a Magna Charta for liberty of con- 
Sciences 

Two days later Mather was once more at Whitehall. This 
time he was admitted to the king’s closet.“4 Once again he poured 
out New England’s thanks for the “gracious Declaration of 
Indulgence.” Once again the king expressed pleasure, and made 
broad statements as to his liberal aims. There was not much 

11. Autobiography, which I follow in describing Mather’s interviews with the king. 
Cf. also, Parentator, pp. 109, IIo. 

12. Cf. Andros Tracts, ii, 133 n. 


13. Autobiography; Parentator, p. 110. 
14. Ibid., pp. 110ff.; Autobiography. 


THE COURT OF JAMES THE SECOND 195 


headway to be made thus, but James’s question, as to how New 


England received Andros’s rule, gave an opening for the real 
beginning of Mather’s campaign. He had come not merely to, 


give thanks. Massachusetts, as he saw it, demanded a change of 


the king’s query he replied that the royal governor would be 
agreeable to his subjects “if he would but duly attend to” the 
royal Declaration. Instead, said Mather, “there have been some 
of your subjects fined & imprisoned, because they, out of tender- 
ness of conscience, declined swearing by the Book. I brought 
an address of thanks to your Majesty from more than twenty 
congregations. I believe all the congregations in New England 
would have concurred in that Address had not their Ministers 
been discouraged by Sir Edmond....The ministers in Boston 


government, and the first step must be the recall’of Andros. To 


oe 


proposed to their congregations that they might keep a day of | 
thanksgiving to bless God for his goodness in making your | 


Majesty their king. Sir Edmond sent for them, & bid them keep — 


the day at their peril.”’ * 

Probably the colonists’ zeal to thank God for James II was not 
great, although they did wish to give praise for the Declaration 
of Indulgence. Mather’s statement was admirably worded for 
the royal ears, if, perhaps, a somewhat too loyal coloring of 
Massachusetts’ views. 

The king declared himself surprised, and bade Mather put in 
writing his specific requests. Upon this he “kneeled to his 
Majesty, & he held out his hand to” him. His visitor kissed it, 
“& took” his leave “‘for that time.” * 

On June fourth Mather was hard at work drawing up New 
England’s complaints.*7 On the seventh he dined with Mr. 
Lobb.** On the ninth, he visited “my Lord Fleetwood,” that 
“weak man, but very popular with all the praying part of the 
army, son-in-law of Oliver Cromwell, and staunch fighter for 
his cause. He was an old man now, and, shorn of his honors, lived 
at Stoke Newington, a near neighbor of Mather’s, and a former 
parishioner of his good friend, John Owen. Even in his last days, 
Fleetwocd must have been an admirable figure to a New Eng- 
lander, a friend of the Commonwealth, and no lover of the 

15. Autobiography. 16. Lbid. 


17. MS. Diary, June 4, 1688: “prprd complaints.” 
18, [did., June 7, 1688. On June 23, Mather “lodged at Mr. Lob’s”’ (Idid., June 23). 


a 


196 INCREASE MATHER 


Stuarts.2 The next day Mather “dined by Charing Cross with 
Sr. Nich. Butler,” a member of the Privy Council and of the 
hated Ecclesiastical Commission, and “‘shewed him the memorial 
of N. E.’s present state.?° Hee s[aild Sr. Ed. Andros deserved to 
have his ears cutt. That hee doubted not, but ye next time ye 
council sat there wld be an order for ofulr relief. That hee wld 
shew ye memorial to ye Ld psident™ & yt ye Ld psident & 
Himselfe wld introduce me with it to ye K.” These were wel- 
come words. 

During the next week Mather talked with many, among them 
Mr. Griffith, a Puritan minister, in London, “very conversible, 
and much the gentleman”; Mr. Thomas Sergeant, in whom one 
would like to recognize a former unruly pupil at Harvard;** Mr. 
Alsop, influential at court, and noted for his “vividness of wit”’ 
and ‘‘nimbleness of raillery”;74 Mr. Baxter, “that excellent in- 


strument of divine grace’’;?S Lord Culpeper, erstwhile governor 


of Virginia,?° and William Penn.?7 Mather may have distrusted 
him, as a Quaker, but he writes, “to give Mr. Penn his.due,’’ 2° 
that he said “that Nicholson 22...should be removed; that 


19. MS. Diary, June 9. The quotation in the text is from Lord Clarendon, History, 
lili, T049, 1050. 

20. MS. Diary, June 16, 1688. Cf. also, May 31. For Butler, cf. Luttrell, 1, 400, 
415, 416, 420, 421, 481, and iv, 655. He wasa Catholic. 

21, That is, the Lord President of the Privy Council, Robert Spencer, second Earl 
of Sunderland (1640-1702), who was a dominant power under King James, and, later, 
under William. He was brought up a Protestant, but joined the Roman church. 

He was called: 

A Proteus, ever acting in disguise; 
A finished statesman, intricately wise; 
A second Machiavel, who soar’d above 


The little tyes of gratitude and love. (See DNB.) 


Macaulay in his History pictures him vividly. 

22. MS. Diary, 1688, June 18; Nonconformist’s Memorial, 1, 107. 

23. MS. Diary, 1688; J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, li, 443. 

24. MS. Diary, 1688, June 19; Nonconformist’s Memorial, ii, 48ff. See also, DVB, 
whence the quotations in the text are taken. 

2s. MS. Diary, 1688, June 20, “at Mr. Baxter’s.” Richard Baxter, one of the 
greatest English Puritans, needs no comment here. See DNB, and bibliography there 
given, and Nonconformist’s Memorial, iii, 393. The quotation is from Dr. Bates’s 
funeral sermon for Baxter, quoted in [did., p. 401. 

26. MS. Diary, 1688, June 20. “At Whitehall discourse with my Ld Culpeper.” 
This was probably Thomas, Lord Culpeper. Cf. Luttrell, 1, 163, 204, 215, and references 
to Culpeper in Channing, vol. ii, and J. A. Doyle, The English in America. Virginia, 
Maryland and the Carolinas, pp. 343f. 

27. Channing, ii, 102ff.; bibliography in Jdid., p.127; and Macaulay, History, chap. 7. 

28. Autobiography. 

2g. Francis Nicholson, military representative of Andros. His commission as lieu- 
tenant governor of New England is cited in Ca/. State Papers, Am. andW.1., xii, #1709. 


THE COURT OF JAMES THE SECOND 197 





something should be sent to Andros that would nettle his nose, 
& that if he did not comply therewith he should be turned out of 
his government.” 3° On Thursday the twenty-first he went to 
Whitehall and “wayted on my Ld psident”’ * of the Privy 
Council. Sunderland said ‘“‘hee doubted Sr E. A. was not kind to 
dissenters, bad me tell him wt it was I desired for N. E. & it 
sld be done.” 2 Once more, Mather found promises were cheap. 
In the afternoon he talked with “‘Nevil Payn,” who wrote plays 
occasionally, plotted often, and was distrusted as one who “‘dealt 
with both hands.” 33 Payne recommended that Mather see Father 
-  Petre.34 This he did not do, the Puritan in him warning him not 
to trust so notorious a disciple of Rome. “Since,” he writes, “I 
_ have seen that it was a gracious providence that did prevent 
me.” 35 A last adviser was his brother Nathaniel, with whom he 
often discussed affairs.*° : 

On Monday, July second, he saw the king again, in his closet 
at Whitehall, and presented a “Petition & Memorial in behalf of 
New England.” 37 The king promised to take care of the matters 
mentioned in the paper. Mr. Lobb and “Counsellor Owen” were 
present,?* and the former, eager that James should never forget 
his sect, remarked: “If his majesty would be kind to New Eng- 
land, it would have a good influence on Dissenters in England.” 
Sir Hugh Owen, not to be outdone, and with a lawyezr’s liking for 
written articles, said: “If your Majesty would cause something 
to be published in behalf of the Dissenters in New England, that 
the world might see it, probably it would be of great advantage.” 
Mather seized the opportunity to introduce a second of the great 
objects of his mission, asking a charter for the College. He») 
declared: “If the church of England men had built a College for 
themselves, no one would object against it, but we think it hard |” 
that the College built by Non-conformists, should be put into the » 
hands of Conformists.”’ 


Se ee ee ee ee eee 


a 


30. Autobiography; MS. Diary, 1688, June 18. 

31. Ibid., June 21. 32. Ibid. 

33. Ibid.; DNB, “Henry Neville Payne.” 

34. Autobiography. Edward Petre was the confessor of James IJ, and became a 
member of the Privy Council in 1687. 

35. Lbid. 

36. Cf., for example, MS. Diary, 1688, June 29, July 11. 

37. Autobiography; Parentator, p. 113. 

38. Autobiography. This was probably Sir Hugh Owen, who was admitted to the 
Inner Temple in 1672, and was M. P. for Pembrokeshire 1689-95. See G. E. C., Com- 
plete Baronetage, ii, 131. 





198 INCREASE MATHER 


| To which James: “That ’s unreasonable, and it shall not be.” *° 

For the next three months Mather busied himself with more 
interviews with Alsop, Lord Bellasis, First Lord of the Treasury,‘ 
Lord Culpeper, Baxter, Matthew Mead, the Attorney-General, 
Sir Thomas Powis, Robert Boyle, Mr. Powell,? and William 
Ashurst. With a Yankee’s delight in a bargain, he records that 
he ‘used to indent with some of” the nonconformist ministers 
at London, “that if they would spare time to go unto such or 
such a great person of their acquaintance, & improve their 
interest in him for New England, then I would gladly assist 
them in preaching.” #4: Thus he preached for Thomas Cole,‘s for 
John Quick “ at Bartholomew Close, and for many others, and 
established himself in the politicians’ minds as a man whose con- 
nections with English Puritans made him a factor to be reckoned 
with. 

On August twenty-first there is a peculiarly significant entry 
in his diary: “Discourse with Sir W. Phips about N. E.” 47 Sir 
William Phipps #8 was born in Maine in 1650, of poor parents. 
He became apprentice to a ship’s carpenter, and moved to Boston. 
There he married the widow of John Hull, “a young gentle- 
woman of good repute.” 49 Fascinated by dreams of treasure 
trove, he managed to turn his savings to use, and, in 1683, took 
command of the English ship 4/gier Rose. After adventures 
befitting an age of romantic seafaring, he discovered a sunken 
wreck, whence he retrieved a considerable fortune. He came to 

39. Autobiography. 

40. John, Lord Bellasis. Cf. DNB, “John Belasyse (1614-1689).” He was a 
Catholic. 

41. A Puritan divine of some prominence. Nonconformist’s Memorial, 1, 461ff., 
and DNB. 

42. Luttrell, i, 424. He became Speaker of the House of Commons during the in- 
terregnum. 

43. Exact identification of this “Mr. Powell” is not possible, but I believe him to 
be Henry Powle, 1630-1692 (see DNB). He was not active in politics in 1688, but was 
a lawyer, and a member of the Royal Society. He was known as a historical and legal 
scholar, as well as an antiquarian. 

44. Autobiography. 

45. Thomas Cole, Puritan divine, tutor of Locke, schoolmaster in Oxfordshire, 
preacher at a church on Silver St., London, and lecturer at Pinners Hall. Noncon- 
formist’s Memorial, i, 249ff.; MS. Diary, 1688, July 29; DNB. 

46. Nonconformist’s Memorial, ii, 9f.; MS. Diary, 1688, August 16. 

47. [bid., August 21. 


48. For him, see C. Mather, Magnalia, book II, Appendix, and DNB, “Sir William 
Phipps.” 


49. Mather, Magnalia, book II, Appendix, section 3. 


THE COURT OF JAMES THE SECOND 199 


London in 1687 with prosperity and a reputation, and was 
knighted by the king. He maintained an interest in Boston, and 
built a house there. He eagerly opposed Andros, and came to 
England in 1688, to use what influence he had in Mather’s 
behalf. Adventurer as he was, and most happy when in some 
active and perilous quest, faced with a mutinous crew, or a 
stormy sea, he had, none the less, a persistent strain of piety. 

He had, if Cotton Mather’s quotation of him be correct, 
first become “sensible of his Sins” in 1674, when he heard 
Increase Mather “preach concerning, ‘The day of trouble near.’” 
Thereupon, he adds, it “pleased Almighty God to smite me with 
a deep sense of my miserable condition, who had lived until then 
in the world, and had done nothing for God.” s° Thenceforth 
he combined with a talent for making money, political ambition, 
and boldness, if nothing more, in military enterprise, a taste for 
Puritan doctrine. His religious yearnings and, particularly, his 
reverence for the Mathers, stood him in good stead in his quest for 
power. bah 

It is easier to picture Mather dealing successfully with Phipps, 
or with King James himself, than it is to think of him as a per- 
suasive visitor to various ladies of the court. Diplomacy before 
and after him found court beauties useful. So he knew that the 
word of a lady-in-waiting sometimes has influence with a queen, 
and that a wife may prevail on a statesman when others fail. 
One must abandon, once and for all, any illusion that Mather, 
because he was a Puritan, was, therefore, no more than an under- 
bred and obtrusively pious reformer. Instead, we find him 
“known to some ladies of honor” s* who were of power in court 
circles. The Countess of Sutherland was later, as we shall see, a 
friend whose interest was used in his behalf. The Countess of 
Anglesey was another of his fair allies. ‘““She was a member of 
Dr. Owen’s church,” * and the widow of Arthur Annesley, first 
Earl of Anglesey.*s Lady Clinton, again a disciple of a Puritan, 
being “‘one of Mr. Alsop’s church,” * was another member of the 
court circle not immune to the persuasiveness of a New Eng- 
lander’s tongue, and Madam Lockhart, one of Queen Mary’s 


50. Mather, Magnalia, book II, Appendix, section 9. 
$1. Autobiography. 

52. Lbid. 

53. W. Orme, Memoirs ... of Fohn Owen, p. 374. 

54. Autobiography. 


200 INCREASE MATHER 


ladies,*s also did him services. These were all women versed in 
the ways of the world and, more especially, of the English court. 
There is no more vivid tableau in all his life’s story than that 
evoked by the thought of Increase Mather received by the 
Countess of Anglesey, or by the Countess of Sutherland. He, 
soberly clad, and somewhat impressed by the glow of many 
candles and the brilliant costumes dear to Pepys’s heart, was, 
none the less, able to capture the attention even of the patched, 
powdered, and worldly-minded, by his manner and speech. 
Surely he did not talk only of politics or theology. Surely some 
latent strain of courtliness, some aptitude for deft compliment, 
or, at least, for entertaining talk of the world, came to his aid. 
Without them he could hardly have won so easily the good offices 
of these “ladies of honor.” 

Most of them, of course, were influential in the years after 1688, 
but before he had been a year in England, we find him visiting 
Madam Lloyd, a good friend of Bostonians. ‘Moreover, he 
discovered early that a man deaf to his exhortations might have 
a wife more ready to hear. So on June eleventh, Stephen Mason 
wrote him: 5? 





Just as you went from the booksellers, I with Mad? Bl were 
there [to] wait on you, & suppose you took coach, or must haue over- 
taken you i[n] Cheapside; but missing you, & fearing a letter by the 
penny post might faile, I came hither to let you know that this day 
Mr. P. was at her lodgings, & that he assures her that you need not 
doubt all things [shall be] done to your content, and that he will la- 
bour in it, but not above board, [&] so as M*. Blaithwaite shall know 
nothing of it, but saith it wilbe about Io daies first, because of the pre- 
sent rejoycing, which hinders all buissinesse; & tels her that N. E. 
people have been represented as such who haue wronged his Majesty 
in his customes, & an odd humoured people, which occasioned what 
hath been transacted in N. E., but that he will undeceiue his Matesty. 
He aduised her to goe to my Lord Bellasise, as a person much in fa- 
vour, which she resolues to doe on Thursday next. 

Praying the Lord to succeed your endeauours, I remaine S™., Yo? 
sincerely affet ff? & serut. 


55. Autobiography; Andros Tracts, iii, 1§8 n. 

56. MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 248, 271; Series 6, i, 78, 98, ii, 204; MS. Diary, 1688, 
Sept. 5. 

57. MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 699. For Mason, cf. Idid., Series 5, v, 254, 284, 286, 
vii, 63; and Series 6, i, 116, 118, 150, 151, 201; J. Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, iil, 
170. MS. Diary, 1688, gives Mason’s address as “at the three carved lions in Cafion 
Street.” 


THE COURT OF JAMES THE SECOND 201 


Penn,5* Mason, and Mather seem to have won over Mts. Mary 
Blathwayt,°? whose husband, William, was in high place, and by 
no means a whole-hearted supporter of the colonial cause.® 
One wishes that she had left a record as to how Mather and his 
sympathizers gained her active interest. Clearly his personality 
and skill turned varied human means to the uses of his diplomacy. 

By September twenty-sixth, when he next visited the king’s 
closet," James IT’s usefulness to New England was waning, and 
his promises seemed less precious than in the days when William 
of Orange’s shadow loomed less largely on the political horizon. 
On the other hand, it is said, he had but five days before publicly 
declared that he intended to establish liberty of conscience by 
legal means,” and in Mather’s presence he was no less generous 
with assurances of the benefits he planned for the colonies. It is 
interesting to find Mather urging haste. 

“T humbly pray,” he said, “that the matter may be expedited, 
and I know that if your majesty shall be kind to New England it 
will have a good influence on your affairs here.” James, remem- 
bering certain news that the Dutch were preparing against him, 
which had come but three days before,® can hardly have failed 
to see in his black-coated visitor one who was no mere novice in 
the day’s politics. 

James hastened, so far as England was concerned, to make a 
last attempt to rebuild his crumbling political foundations. On 
September twenty-ninth he proclaimed a general pardon; the 


58. I identify the “Mr P.” of the letter, as Penn, in view of Mather’s frequent 
references to him in his diaries as ‘‘M? P.”’ 

$9. The identification of “Made Bl ” as Mrs. Blathwayt seems clear from the 
context. She was Mary Wynter, daughter of John Wynter of Dyrham, Gloucestershire, 
and married Blathwayt December 23, 1686. 

60. DNB. He became clerk of the Privy Council on October 22, 1686, and was a 
witness at the trial of the bishops. See reference to him, under the initials W. B., in 
Increase Mather’s letter to Governor Hinckley, September 12, 1689, when he writes: 
“You have no enemy like your friend W. B., to whom you sent fifty guineas.” MHS 
Coll., Series 4, v, 211. 

Blathwayt wrote Sir Robert Southwell, saying: “Increase Mather... etc., are come 
hither from Massachusetts with addresses and have audiences of the great ones now. 
And there are joint endeavors to supplant Sir Edmund (Andros) and discredit the 
Cavaleros but I hope Sir Ed. Andros has taken such root in his Majestie’s good opinion 
as to withstand some shocks.”” E. F. Ward, Christopher Monck, p. 301. (Quoted there 
from Welbeck MSS.) 

61. Autobiography; Parentator, p. 114. 

62. See memorandum of Thomas Prince, Sept. 21, 1688, in MHS Coll., Series 4, 
Vill, 713. 

63. [bid.; Macaulay, History, chap. 9. 





202 INCREASE MATHER 


next day he relieved the Bishop of London from his sentence of 
suspension; on October first London’s charter was restored; on 
the fourth the Commission for Ecclesiastical Causes was dis- 
solved; and on the twelfth, good augury for Harvard, Magdalen 
College was granted its former rights. 

On October sixteenth Mather met James for the last time. 
Lord Wharton, who had espoused the New Englander’s cause, 
conducted him to the royal presence. Philip Wharton, fourth 
baron, was a good Puritan, and a benefactor to dissenters, whose 
name lives in more than one nonconformist’s grateful letters or 
diary. Events had proved James to be in a mood to concede 
much, and Mather and Wharton may well have had high hopes, 
hearing his glib assurance “that property, liberty, & the college 
should all be confirmed to”? New England. Cotton Mather, 
who had before him, not only the autobiography and diaries still 
accessible to us, but also information drawn from talking over the 
whole affair with his father, when his memories of it were still 
fresh, tells us that Increase hoped the “Distress. . . of the Im- 
pending Revolution”? would compel James to action; and, appar- 
ently, after the royal interview in October, Mather believed the 
king’s promise was likely to be fulfilled. False rumors that the 
Prince of Orange’s expedition was diverted lightened the pressure 
upon James, and destroyed New England’s hopes. Whereupon 
Cotton Mather described his father as saying of the king: “I will 
see thy Face no more.” 

It was clear at last that fair words were all James could give. 
With this October the first stage of Mather’s agency ends. He 
had improved each week by efforts to add to his party every 
influential person, noble or lady, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, 
or Quaker, to whom he could gain access. In his personal inter- 
views with the king, he had been unflagging in his determination 
not to allow it to be forgotten that nonconformists, in colonies 
as well as in mother country, were to be appeased. By October 
he was known in more than one great London house, and his 
name was familiar to the Attorney-General and to the lords of 
the Privy Council. He had made it impossible for any deft 
political architect to\build, quite oblivious of New England and 
her agent. 

64. Philip, fourth Baron Wharton. See DNB. 

65. Autobiography. Cf. Cal. State Papers, Am. and W, I., xii, ¥%1879, which seems 


to show that James meant to fulfil this promise. 
66. Parentator, pp. 115, 116. 


YAATY AHL WOU AOVIVd TIVHALIHM 

















THE COURT OF JAMES THE SECOND 203 


Meanwhile he had been kept informed of affairs at home. From 
Samuel Sewall had come letters asking aid on the point in which 
the shoe pinched him most under Andros’s laws.°7 John Cotton 
wrote, too, asking Mather’s good offices with English promoters 
of missions among the American Indians.®* Such letters brought 
the news of Boston streets, and Phipps, who sailed for England, 
probably in July,®? brought first-hand impressions of colonial 
affairs. 

Andros had journeyed in April, shortly after Mather’s sailing, 
to the Penobscot, where a Frenchman, one Castine, ruled a little 
kingdom of his own in defiance of any English governor. He 
promptly vanished when Andros arrived, and the latter was 
content to take some of his unwilling host’s belongings, sending 
word that he might regain his property by offering allegiance to 
Great Britain. Thence Andros turned to Pemaquid, where, with 
Randolph, he persuaded the Maine Indians to agree to keep the 
peace.’° 

Returning to Boston, he found awaiting him a new royal com- 
mission, dated in April, making him governor of all British 
America, save for Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Vir- 
ginia. His capital was to be at Boston, where he was to be assisted 
by a Council of forty-two members, of whom five constituted a 
quorum. The governor was empowered to remove councillors, 
provided he could show due cause to the king. He had authority 
to impose and collect taxes, and to make laws, subject to the 
English Privy Council’s veto. Liberty of conscience was to be 
maintained, but strict censorship of the press was insisted upon.7! 

In July and August, Andros visited his new territories in the 
south, and in September went to Albany to try to reach some 
_ peaceful understanding with the Indians of the Five Nations. 
Sporadic outbreaks of the natives were causing trouble, and just 
prior to Mather’s last interview with the king, the provisional 
government in Boston sent troops to Maine to protect the English 
there.” 

While Andros thus extended his domain, untroubled, appar- 
ently, save for red-skinned neighbors, Mather was trying hard to 
undermine his standing in London. To see just what his weapons 
Were, one must consider not only his speeches to the king, but 

67. MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, §17, 519. 70. Palfrey, ili, 558ff. 


68. Idid., pp. 226 n., 255, 257. 71. [bid., pp. 561ff. 
69. Ibid., p. 712. 72. Ibid, 


204 INCREASE MATHER 


the various detailed statements he proffered to the English 
authorities. 

At their first meeting Mather gave James the thanks of the 
Massachusetts churches for the Declaration of Indulgence, and 
with it a similar document from congregations in Plymouth.” 
The latter raised the issue of charter restoration, urging that the 
Pilgrim colony be allowed to keep what it held to be its charter 
rights. 

When Mather saw the king on July second, he presented a 
“ Vemorial of the Grievances which filled his Country with the 
Cry of the Oppressed.” ™ In this he asserted that James’s subjects 
in New England “dissenting from the Church of England are by 
much the greatest & wealthiest Part”; that Massachusetts was 
the first of the colonies to proclaim the king, and that they sub- 
mitted quietly to the royal governor. They have, he declares, 
been maligned by the episcopal party, and the “Service of the 
Church of England has bin forced into their Meeteing Houses.” ® 

All this was true, unless, perhaps, it was wrong to include all 
the accusations made against the colony by Randolph and others, 
under the head of attacks by “the episcopal party.” But it was 
true that Church of England men had said and written hard 
things of New England Puritans, and to ascribe religious mo- 
tives was as easy as it was natural. 

The next item in the complaint was that Andros had not 
allowed the churches “to sett apart Days of Prayer and Thanks- 
giving: no, not even for the Blessing of your Gracious Declaration 
for Liberty of Conscience, Nor were the People there Encouraged 
to make humble Addresses of Thanks, but the Contrary.” 7° 
It appears that although Andros had ordered thanksgiving from 
the whole colony for the king’s liberality,”7— a fact Mather does 
not mention, — he had forbidden special Congregational days of 
rejoicing over the Declaration of Indulgence.7* One need not. 

53. MHS Coll., Series 4, viti, 697, 698; Andros Tracts, iii, 133ff.; Cal. State Papers, 
Am. and W.1., xii, %1793- 

74. Autobiography; Parentator, pp. 112, 113; MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 113, 115, 
699-702; Andros Tracts, ili, 136 n., 137 n., 138 n., 139 N. 

75. MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 699, 700. 

76. Ibid., p. 700. 77. Palfrey, iii, §48 and n. 

78. This was asserted by Mather, again and again, and by Cotton Mather in Par- 
entalor, p. 103. In the margin of the document we have been discussing, opposite the 
reference to this matter, is written “Three ministers in Boston, & one now in London 
doe attest to this.’ (MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 700.) It seems unlikely that a charge 


of this sort would have been brought without authority, inasmuch as Andros’s side of 
the case was sure to be promptly heard. 


THE COURT OF JAMES THE SECOND 205 


blame him. He believed, soundly enough, that in His Majesty’s 
Government, not in the Congregational church, lay the authority 
to call public days of thanksgiving.7? Moreover, he was a mili- 
tary governor and versed in the ways of crowds. It could not but 
be dangerous for him to allow the party most bitterly averse to 
him to celebrate publicly a royal decree which weakened the 
position of the church he wished to uphold. On the other hand, 
his tact, not always to be relied upon, failed him here, for his 
action gave the Puritans a strong weapon with a king who prom- 
ised “‘liberty of conscience”’ largely to win such men as they. 
Mather then asserts that “there have bin threatnings to punish 
any Man that should give to the value of Two pence to maintaine 
a Nonconformist Minister.” 8° This sounds perilously like mere 
rumor, but a marginal note declares “Sam! Seawell, Theophs 
Frary, & severall others in New-England can attest to this.” * 
What the basis for the charge was, we do not know, but probably 
Sewall and Frary understood some English official’s hasty speech 
to mean more than it did, and capitalized it as a ground for com- 
plaint. The accusation that New Englanders were fined and 
imprisoned for refusing to swear on the Bible, a practice forbidden 
by Puritan consciences, seems sustained, although it is probable 
that imprisonment was not the penalty for failure to swear in the 
prescribed form, but for contempt of court, when the recalcitrants 
withheld their fines. The next three charges concern property, 
averring that dissenters’ lands have been given to Episcopalians, 
that land was seized unless payments were made to hold it, that 
the people have been told by officials “that they are no better 
then Slaves, that they have no Title to Property or English 
Privilidges.” *3 All this came from Andros’s attack on land titles, 
and from John Wise’s report of what Dudley said to him.*4 The 
statement of the case is not too strong for the facts as the Puritan 
saw them. As to the complaint that Massachusetts men had 


79. W. D. Love, The Fast and Thanksgiving Days, pp. 228, 229. 

80. MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 700. 

81. Lbid., p. 366, where is given a letter from Joshua Moodey to Mather, saying: 
““A copy of the Articles came over with some marginall notes of the names of sundry 
witnesses, some of which have been & are concerned to think whether it was so pru- 
dent & kind to expose them till the pinch came.” See also, [did., p. 700. 

82. For the two sides of this, see Andros Tracts, i, 11ff., especially section 7, and 
1, 21ff., especially pp. 46, 47. 

83. MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 700. 

84. Cf., for example, Palfrey, iii, 526, 527, 529ff., and J. T. Adams, The Founding, 


pp. 417ff. 


206 INCREASE MATHER 


been jailed without reason, and fined for unknown offences, 
sufficient basis was found in the lack of printed laws under 
Andros, particularly noticeable in a commonwealth where printed 
statutes had come to be looked upon as a bulwark of popular 
rights.*s Finally, in the copy of the “Memorial” preserved to- 
day, the last paragraph is in Mather’s hand and refers to the 
college, repeating the Puritans’ great fear lest Harvard might 
come to be governed by Anglican authorities.* 

With the complaints Mather presented suggestions for their 
redress, in which Samuel Nowell and Elisha Hutchinson joined 
him.*? They asked that land titles be confirmed to the colonists, 
on the terms in force before the loss of the old charter. They 
asked for “liberty of conscience in matters of Religion,” recog- 
nition of the old way of taking oaths, and reservation of Con- 
gregational churches for the use of their owners. They hoped 
no taxes might be imposed without the consent of an assembly, 
and that town governments might exercise the same powers as 
in charter days. As for the College, they begged that it be left, 
as before, to the rule of its President and Fellows. These requests 
aimed at the obvious remedies for the colonists’ chief grievances, 
and do not savor of a desire for an unreasonable degree of inde- 
pendence. Certainly they contain no hint of a longing for an 
intolerant religious government in New England. This is the 
more important, since Mather has been accused of having had 
primarily in view the preservation of the old religious restriction 
of the suffrage, and the salvation of Congregational power.** If 
this was his main desire, it is, to say the least, remarkable that he 
did not ask for it, and even more strange that he did petition for 
“liberty of conscience” and, later, even for the granting of the 
franchise to all ‘‘freeholders” without religious limitation. It is 
hard to see why he signed, with Nowell and Hutchinson, a peti- 
tion seeking to have granted to Harvard a charter “confirming 
the Governmt of that Society in such hands as layed the Foun- 
dation thereof, they taking Care that Persons of all Parswa- 
sions relating to Religion, that may desire to be admitted among 

85. Palfrey, iti, §23, 524. 

86. MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 700. 87. Ibid., p. 701. 

88. J. T. Adams (The Founding, p. 435) says: “In England, Mather was exerting 
every means to fasten the shackles permanently on the colony by insisting upon the 
old Congregational test for the suffrage.” On pp. 445, 446, he repeats this view of 


Mather. As we shall see, he not only did not ask for the old limitation of the suffrage 
but signed a petition asking that it be granted to “‘freeholders.” 


| 





THE COURT OF JAMES THE SECOND 207 


them, shall be instructed in Academicall learning.” §» There was 
no diplomatic reason for feigning liberal views. James was cater- 
ing to Puritans, and knew the English church was for the most 
part hostile. Mather believed his requests would be granted.- To 
suppose, then, that he deliberately failed to ask for what he 
wanted, and asked, instead, for the contrary, is to make him not 
only an impossibly stupid bungler, but a bungler devoid even of 
instinct. One cannot realize too early in studying his agency 


that he fought for the popular cause, not the cause of his own. 
sect. If land titles were assured, and an assembly provided, and 


if “liberty of conscience” was granted, he would have righted the 
greatest wrongs. With the popular support such success would 
assure him, his personal ends would be well served. A narrower 
programme might please his church, but must deny to him the 
general favor by which alone he could remain a force in public 
affairs or in the church itself. Only when this situation is clearly 
seen, can one understand the later course of Mather’s mission in 
England. 

Mather also petitioned the Committee for Trade and Foreign 
Plantations. They referred his requests to the Attorney-Gen- 
eral.°° But William Blathwayt, the Clerk of the Council, made 
a copy from which all mention of an assembly was omitted. 
“ Being spoke to about it, he said the Earl of Sunderland blotted 
out that with his own hand,” and “a Soliciter in this Cause” told 
the agents that the king had commissioned Andros to raise money 
without an assembly, and “would never consent to an Altera- 
tion.” * Whether Blathwayt merely hid behind Sunderland, 
one cannot tell; but it is interesting to remember that his wife 
encouraged Mather by working in his interests, while her lord and 
master drew up documents denying popular government to New 
England. 

We are fortunate in knowing just what Mather’s petition to 
the Committee asked for, and just what the English authorities 
refused to grant. Among the State Papers, the document is pre- 
served, signed by Mather, Nowell, and Hutchinson. It asks 
that titles to land owned prior to May 24, 1686, be confirmed, 
that the register of titles to lands in New England be validated, 


89. MHS Proc., xii, 112. 

90. Cal. State Papers, Am. and W. I., xii, %1859, 1860. 
g1. Andros Tracts, ii, 10. 

g2. Cal, State Papers, Am. and W.1., xii, ¥1860. 


ee ee 


—— — 


208 INCREASE MATHER 


that the townships be allowed to decide questions as to com- 
mons and other business by vote of a majority of freeholders 
(not merely ‘‘ freemen,’ members of a church, but all property 
owners), and that their commons be definitely granted to them. 
Courts of conscience % are asked for, one for each precinct, with 
jurisdiction up to the value of forty shillings. The petitioners 
sought to have probates of wills made in these courts, in cases 
where the estate did not exceed ten pounds. Larger estates 
were to go to the County Courts for probate. All marriages 
were to be registered and ratified in the Courts of Conscience, 
and there was to be a court of equity for all important cases. 
To these clauses no objection was made. 

The colonists’ other requests were less favorably received. 
Mather and his allies asked that, a revenue of five thousand 
pounds a year being first provided for the maintenance of the 
government, no other taxes should be levied except by the Gen- 
eral Assembly. They wished to have this body the governor’s 
council, elected by the freeholders of each precinct. No laws were 
to be made except by this assembly. There was to be liberty of 

- conscience, no man was to be obliged to maintain a religion he 

_ did not profess, each sect was to be left to support itself, and the 

college was to be confirmed to those who founded it, while meet- 

_ing-houses were to be left in the control of those who built them. 
All these proposals the Committee refused. 

This document clears up once and for all any questions as to 
whether Mather was illiberal, or narrow, in his zeal to serve his 
church at the popular expense. He asked votes for freeholders, 
no longer merely for the freemen who had formerly been required 
to be Congregationalists; he urged government by a popular 
assembly, sought liberty of conscience, and repudiated taxation 
of citizens for the support of churches other than their own. And, 
be it noted, not the bigoted Puritan of popular fancy, but the 
Earl of Sunderland and his fellow committee-men, defeated the 
prompt coming of a liberal popular government for New England. 

The Committee’s refusal of certain clauses, coupled with the 
rumors that the Dutch invasion was averted,® lulling James to 
fancied security on his throne, made it plain that the colonial 
demands would not be accepted in full. Accordingly, in October, 

93. See NED, under “Court,” definition IV, 11, c: “a small debt court.” 


§ 94. Cal. State Papers, Am. andW.1., xii, #1860. 
95. Parentator, p. 115. 


THE COURT OF JAMES THE SECOND 209 


Mather, Nowell, and Hutchinson resolved to get what they 
might, and once more petitioned the Committee.% If a popular 
assembly cannot be hoped for, they said, “‘the Council should 
consist of such persons as shall be considerable Proprietors of 
Lands within his Majesty’s dominions”; and they asked “that 
the Countys being continued as at present, each County may 
have one, at least, of such of the Inhabitants of the same to be 
a member thereof.”’ They begged that no laws be made without a 
majority vote of the Council, and that all laws, once passed, be 
printed. “So small a boon,” writes Palfrey, ‘“‘were men of 
Massachusetts content to ask from a King of England.” 97 Most 
interesting of all, the boon concerned popular government, and, 
once more, there is no word of Mather’s alleged preoccupation 
with church sovereignty. 

James’s temporary respite, based on the false report of the 
frustration of William’s plan for invasion, was short. The events. 
of the Revolution of 1688 need no discussion here. It is enough 
to recall that early in November Mather must have heard of the 
arrival of a manifesto from the Prince of Orange, and of James’s | 
wrath. William was already at sea, and on the fifth of November 
he landed at Torbay. On the ninth he was received in Exeter. 
There were disturbances in London, men of rank joined the 
invader, and, on the nineteenth, James took up quarters at 
Salisbury. Deserted by Churchill and his own daughter, Anne, 
he soon came back, almost alone, to London. On November 
thirtieth he began to prepare for a parliamentary election, but his 
game was lost. On December tenth he hurried his wife and son 
across the Channel. The next day he tried to follow, casting the 
Great Seal of England into the muddy waters of the Thames. 
He was captured two days later, and brought back, only to 
escape again on the eighteenth. On the twenty-third he sailed 
for France, leaving William safely in Whitehall, receiving the 
congratulations of his new subjects. 

Meanwhile, in New England, Andros found the Indians amen- 
able only to force. He led a small troop into Maine, and 
the failure of his campaign, coupled with the hardships suffered 
by his men, added one more grievance to the list New England 


96. What seems likely to be a petition presented at this time is in MHS Coll., 
Series 4, vill, 116. Palfrey (iii, 565) assigns it to October, 1688. The reference to the 
refusal of an Assembly makes this date probable. 

97. Idem, iii, 566. 


210 INCREASE MATHER 


cherished against him. Popular animosity fed upon rumor, 
and more than one Massachusetts man saw the royal governor as 
the ally of the French and of King James, against the England 
which was striving to set up William of Orange as the consti- 
tutional leader of a popular government.”® More than one Bos- 
tonian, seeking light in the darkness that had settled on New 
England, pinned his hopes on Increase Mather. In him his 
countrymen saw their one reliance against Andros and his vision- 
ary French allies. In him they saw the only means by which, 
whatever the event of the Revolution, whatever the temper of 
the English government, New England’s cause might be sure of 
effective advocacy at Whitehall. They could record Andros’s 
crimes, real and fancied, they could strive to unify popular feel- 
ing and turn it to effective use, but the real leadership could not 
be theirs. The ultimate success or failure of their hopes rested 
with a man who had fled in disguise from New England nine 
months before, and now, at the English court, bent every re- 
source of a shrewd and active mind to the solution of his coun- 
try’s problem. 

98. Cf. Palfrey, iii, 569; MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 707, 379, 372. In the last passage 
Moodey writes, “It will one day bee known whence this war rose.” That Mather’s 


attacks on Andros on this score were taken seriously enough to be answered shows that 
the matter was one which, in popular estimation, could not be laughed away. 


CHAPTER XIV 


THE NEGOTIATION WITH WILLIAM III 


| BRes Mather the change of government in 1688 meant more 
than that James II’s promises were proved vain. His position 
changed at once on William III’s advent: His nonconformity was 
no longer the support it had been. There was no longer any 
question of pitting one sect against another to serve the king’s 
ends. On the other hand, there was much to be hoped for from 
William. He was looked upon as the savior of Englishmen’s 
rights; and if English corporations -were restored to their old 
prerogatives, there was hope that New England, too, might be 
confirmed once more in its charter privileges. But the argument | 
from now on must be based, not on the Declaration of Indulgence, | 
but on the colony’s claims to the benefits conferred on English 
citizens at home. Massachusetts must justify the constitution- 
ality of the institutions she hoped to save, and her future govern- 
ment must accord with whatever policy the new king saw fit to 
declare. 

Mather continued busily at work. On November thirteenth, 
he had a last interview with Melfort,t the unscrupulous, of the 
“active, undertaking temper,” whose influence in England was so 
nearly at an end. He kept in touch with other political leaders, 
and continued to preach for his brethren in London parishes. 
On December twentieth he “discoursed with Dr. Burnet about” 
New England.? Burnet had been active in William’s interests, 
and was in high favor among the churchmen about the prince. 
Major Thompson introduced Mather to him; and Lord Wharton 


1. MS. Diary, 1688, Nov. 13. Melfort was John Drummond, first Earl and titular 
Duke of Melfort, Jacobite, “one of the handsomest men of his time, an accomplished 
dancer,” but of a character which “never inspired confidence either in his political or 
religious professions.” See DNB. 

2. MS. Diary, 1688, Dec. 20; Autobiography; Parentator, pp. 126, 127. Andros 
Tracts, ii, 272, quotes Burnet on “‘New-England’s Case” in a sermon before the House 
of Commons. 

3. DNB, article “Gilbert Burnet, 1643-1715,” and references there. 


212 INCREASE MATHER 


afterward declared that the agent’s “having engaged the bishop 
of Salisbury to appear for New England was the best job” he 
“had done these seven years.” 4 Sir John Thompson, later a 
member of the Convention Parliament, was another much- 
visited friend,’ and we find Mather walking with him out to 
Hackney, pouring in his ears the sad tale of New England.® On 
December twenty-seventh he met once more “good old” Lord 
Wharton,’ who had become an unflagging ally. He not only 
‘ntroduced Mather “unto many of the nobility,’ but himself 
urged the claims of New England “upon all occasions with the 
king, & with the Lords of the Council, as if he had been con- 
stituted as an agent for the country.” * As early as December 
twenty-eighth, only ten days after William's coming to London, 
Mather was in consultation with the prince’s chaplain, “honest 
William Carstares,” called by Jacobites “the cardinal,” ° and 
with him “drew up a memorial” about New England. Carstares 
advised that it be carried to Bentinck, chamberlain and confiden- 
tial adviser to William. And, on the last day of 1688, Mather not 
only saw Wharton once more, but dined with Sir Henry Ashurst, 
who, of all his English friends, was to be the most consistent and 
useful servant of the colony.*° 

Meanwhile Mather had been writing. Pamphleteering was too 
good a political instrument to be neglected. His unpublished 
diary tells us that, on December fifth, he finished his ‘‘ Narrative 
of the state of New England.” * If we accept this entry as a 
reference to a book called “A Narrative of the Miseries of New- 
England,” ascribed with good reason to Mather, and definitely 
claimed by him, we can be sure, for the first time, of the exact 


4. Autobiography. 

5. See [bid.; MS. Diary, 1688. He was Sir John Thompson, later first Baron Haver- 
sham. See DNB. He married a daughter of the Countess of Anglesey, referred to above 
as one of Mather’s friends. 

6. MS. Diary, 1688, Dec. 22. 

4. Ibid., Dec. 27; Parentator, p. 118. 

8. Autobiography. 

g. MS. Diary, 1688, Dec. 28. The entry reads: “a.m. with Mr. How, & after yt 
with Mr. Carstares (who came with ye prince of orange) about N. E. affair who drew 
up a memorial & advised to carry it to Mouns. Bentinck ye prince’s chamberlain.” For 
Carstares, see DNB, article “‘ William Carstares, 1649-1715.” 

10. MS. Diary, 1688, Dec. 31. Sir Henry Ashurst was a son of a wealthy London 
merchant, Henry Ashurst (1614?-1680), for whom see DNB. Sir Henry was long a 
friend to New England. See references to him in Palfrey and similar works. 

11. MS, Diary, 1688, Dec. 5. 





THE NEGOTIATION WITH WILLIAM III PH 


date of its composition.” It was not printed until after January 
2, 1689, for it refers to events of that day. 

The “Narrative”’ tells the troubles of the colony ‘‘by Reason 
of an Arbitrary Government Erected there Under Sir Edmond 
Andros.” Beginning with a tribute to the character of the New 
Englanders, Mather points out that it is not for “the Honour & 
Interest of the English Nation” to discourage them (p. 3). Eng- 
lish interests have been endangered, primarily by the Quo 
Warranto issued against the original charter. He asserts that 
the judgment against the colony was unjust, because no time was 
given to answer the charges. This statement is supported by 
what we know of the facts.1 Mather continues, saying that 
“Evil Counsellours” desired to set up a French government in 
New England, and Sir Edmund Andros, “a Gernsy-man” was 
chosen as “‘a fit Instrument to be made use of” (p. 5). 

This assertion, however improbable, was based on what the 
colonists believed of Andros’s purposes, and letters from home 
may have given Mather the basis for the charge.*® He goes on to 
decry the royal governor’s failure to print the laws, his prohibi- 


12. The title is: ““A Narrative of the Miseries of New-England, By Reason of an 
Arbitrary Government Erected there Under Sir Edmond Andros.” It is reprinted in 
Andros Tracts, ii, 3ff., to which edition all references in this book are made. 

The ascription of this, and other books, to Mather during this period, rests on the 
following evidence. In a printed address, delivered in 1693 before the Governor and 
legislature of Massachusetts, Mather said that he “Published the Narrative of the 
Miseries of New England,” and that afterwards he wrote “‘a First, Second and Third 
Vindication of the people there”; also that he wrote and dispersed ‘‘Reasons for the 
Confirmation of that Charter.” It seems quite clear from the above that these works 
were all that Mather wrote bearing directly on his pleading of New England’s cause, 
since his address was to justify himself, and he would not have been likely to omit 
anything he had written. 

As to his authorship of the “Narrative,” an unpublished manuscript of Mather’s, 
preserved by the American Antiquarian Society with the 4utobiography, says: “1 drew 
up a Narrative of the Miseries of New England and shewed it to several lords, minis- 
ters, gentlemen, divines, who advised me to cause it to be printed, that so I might 
disperse many of them amongst the lords & commons to be assembled, January 22; 
which was accordingly done.”’ As for the other works which Mather claims, an identi- 
fication of them is attempted in the pages which follow. 

On the whole matter, and this pamphlet, see Andros Tracts, ii, 2. 

13. It reprints The Address of the Nonconformist Ministers &c., delivered to William 
on Jan. 2, 1688-89 (see p. 12 of the “‘Narrative’’). 

14. Mr. Whitmore, in Andros Tracts, i, 66 n., does not agree with Mather’s view; 
but the account in Palfrey, iii, 392-394, especially 394, n. 1, seems to support Mather’s 
statement. 

15. Joshua Moodey wrote Samuel Nowell, as to Andros’s Indian war, hinting 
darkly: “It will one day bee known whence this war arose.” MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 


372. 


214 INCREASE MATHER 


tion of frequent town meetings, his taxation without the vote 
of an assembly, the denial of habeas corpus, excessive charges for 
probates, and the invalidation of land titles, emphasizing the 
inconsistency of such measures with the best English practice. 
He then refers to his own agency, and James’s kind reception of 
him. He prints a petition he presented in behalf of the town of 
Cambridge, stating its grievances under Andros. “Thus has 
New-England been dealt with,” he concludes; “this has been and 
still 7s the bleeding state of that Countrey: they cannot but hope 
that England will send them speedy relief. ... Many had fears 
that there is a Design to deliver that Countrey into the hands of 
the French King, except his Highness the Prince of Orange, whom 
a Divine Hand has raised up to deliver the Oppressed, shall 
happily and speedily prevent it” (pp. Io, I1). 

At the close of his own remarks, Mather adds, “The humble 
Application of Henry Lord Bishop of London,” to the Prince of 
Orange, and “The Address of the Nonconformist Ministers,” in- 
cluding after each the prince’s gracious reply, asserting his devo- 
tion to Protestantism. 

This tract turns to account those items in New England’s brief 
most likely to arouse governmental and popular response in 
England. There is no attack on the English church, but rather 
an appeal to the feelings of the Londoner of the time. For him, 
harping on the rights of English citizens, and dark hints of French 
ageression, had an obvious effect. 

On January second, Sir Henry Ashurst went with Mather to 
St. James’s Palace, and there the New England divine had his 
first glimpse of the Dutch prince.%* A week later Lord Wharton 
conducted him to William, at the palace, and introduced him, 
saying that the people of New England were conscientious and 
godly and asked not for money or troops but for “their ancient 
privileges.” *7 The prince promised to take care of the matter, 
and to give instructions in regard to it, to Mr. Jephson, his 
secretary.*® Wharton then took Mather to Jephson. “Cousin,” 
he said (for Jephson ‘“‘was my Lord’s kinsman’’), “observe this 
gentleman, & whenever he comes to you, receive him as if I 
came myself,” *9 | 

16. MS. Diary, 1688-89, Jan. 2. 

17. Parentator, pp. 118, 119, and Autobiography, describe this interview. I follow 
the latter. 


18. Cf. Luttrell, i, 492, ii, 242. 
19. Autobiography. 


| THE NEGOTIATION WITH WILLIAM III 215 


Soon after, an order was prepared, confirming in office all the 
colonial governors until further orders. Jephson remembered 
Mather, and showed him the document. Now Mather must have 
had more than a shrewd suspicion that Massachusetts, once 
aware of James I]’s fall, would not be likely to continue docilely 
under Andros. Should there be rebellion against him, and should 
there arrive a royal decree continuing him in power, he would 
not only be in a position to put down the revolt by as harsh 
means as he chose, but the colonists would be rebels against the 
Crown. Mather promptly spoke out, and Jephson reported to 
the prince, who commanded that his order be sent to all the 
colonies except New England.”° 

Mather then petitioned that Massachusetts, Plymouth, Rhode 
Island and Connecticut, should all be restored to charter privi- 
leges. The Lords of the Committee, after William Ashurst and 
Mather had appeared before them, recommended to the prince» 
that a new governor be sent with provisional powers, and no 
authority to raise money by mere vote of the Governor and 
Council. It was implied that popular consent was necessary for | 
taxation. The king referred this proposal back to the Com-— 
mittee, bidding them draw up a new charter for New England, to | 
“preserve the rights and properties of those Colonies,” and pro- | 
viding, not for a new governor, but for two commissioners to | 
administer the colony for the present. No action seems to have | 
been taken-on this plan. 

On January eleventh Mather interviewed John Hampden;” 
on the twenty-fifth he discussed colonial affairs with Sir John 
Maynard, “the best old book lawyer of his time’’;73 on February 
eighteenth, with Ashurst, he appeared before the Committee;*4 
on the twenty-fifth he visited the Earl of Bedford;?5 and on the 


20. Autobiography; Parentator, p.119; Andros Tracts, ii, 274,275; J.T. Adams, The 
Founding, pp. 431, 432; Palfrey, iii, 591. 

21. Idem, itt, §92 and n.; Cal. State Papers, Am. and W.1., xiii, X18, 25, 28, 37. 

22. MS. Diary, 1688-89, Jan. 11. Hampden was John Hampden, the younger, 
1653-1696, and spokesman of the extreme Whigs in the Convention Parliament. See 
DNB. 

23. MS. Diary, 1688-89, Jan. 25. Sir John Maynard was born in 1602, and died in 
1690. His career was long and picturesque, as lawyer, and Member of Parliament, 
and on March §, 1689, he became a lord commissioner of the great seal. See DNB. 

24. MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 117. 

25. MS. Diary, 1688-89, Feb. 25 and 27. The Earl of Bedford was William 
Russell, first Duke and fifth Earl of Bedford who was made a member of the Privy 
Council, Feb. 14, 1689, and bore the sceptre at William’s coronation. See DNB. 





| 


216 INCREASE MATHER 


twenty-seventh interviewed Sir Edward Harley. On March 
ninth he went to “ye Temple about N. E. affair.”?7 Mean- 
while, on January sixteenth,?? Samuel Sewall had arrived in 
London, and Mather spent the evening of the seventeenth with 
him,?? and met him often thereafter.3° Sewall was not only a 
Puritan but a business man, and knew, if anyone did, how Andros 
had wounded pocketbooks as well as consciences.** Supported by 
such advisers, and in touch with political leaders, Mather, on 
March fourteenth, visited William, now King of England. 
Once more Wharton introduced him. 

Mather congratulated William on his accession to the throne, 
and implored his favor for New England. The new king was 
shrewder than James, perhaps, and certainly had less reason to be 
conciliatory. He declared that he believed New Englanders were 
good people, but added, “I doubt [fear] there have been irregu- 
‘ Jarities in their government there.” 

It was no longer a campaign of fair words, but one where facts 
were foremost. But Mather was not backward, and replied that 
he dared promise for his countrymen such reforms as were neces- 
sary. To which Wharton added, “And I'll be their guarantee, 
& here is Mr. Mather, the Rector of the College there shall be 
the other. We two will stand bound for New England, that for 
the future they shall act regularly.”” Such a promise was, on 


_Mather’s part, daring. He was not even the officially accredited 


_agent of Massachusetts. He had no authority to speak for its 
‘government. But he had a clear idea of the ends which his fellow 


citizens sought, and enough confidence in his own leadership to 
believe that he could bring them to alter their ways as the king 
might demand, in return for his favor. William accepted the 
pledge, and to Mather’s joy promised to order Andros’s removal, 
and to summon him to account.*3 In return, the colony was to 
proclaim the new king and queen. 

Mather hoped to turn this temporary success into permanent 
victory. Advised by his friends, he decided to try to get a 

26. MS. Diary, 1688-89, Feb. 27, Sir Edward Harley was a member of the Con- 
vention Parliament, sitting for the county of Hereford. For him see DNB, article 
“Sir Edward Harley, 1624-1700.” 

27. MS. Diary, 1688-89, March 9. 28. See MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 247. 

29. MS. Diary, 1688-89, Jan. 17. 

30. See entries in MHS Coll., Series 5, vol. 5. 

31. Sewall’s letters to Mather in Jdid., Series 4, vol. 8. 


32. This interview is described in Autobiography, and Parentator, p. 120. 
33- Cal. State Papers, Am. and W.1., xiii, #28, 37. 


THE NEGOTIATION WITH WILLIAM III 217 


reversal of the judgment against the charter, by act of Parlia- 
ment.** He saw such leaders as Sir Edward Harley, Sir John 
Thompson, William Sacheverell, Alderman Love, John Hampden, 
and Sir John Somers.35 He succeeded in having included in the 
Charter Bill a mention of the colonies. The Committee on 


Grievances reported that the “prosecutions of guo warranto 
against the... plantations” were wrongs deserving redress.% | 


Mather had strong allies in the Commons, ‘“‘and a great Interest 
was also made in the House of Lords.” 37 

New England’s was, of course, but one of the many perplexing 
problems of the new government. Mingled opposition and wel- 
come beset William. Whigs and Tories were mindful of their 
quarrels, and the new king’s course was by no means easy to 
steer. In the face of Mather’s importunity he took, naturally, 
temporary measures to satisfy Massachusetts, but he realized 
that time would be needed to reach a final settlement. But the 
colonists, meanwhile, had justified Mather’s suspicions, and had 
taken the law into their own hands. 

One or two ill-judged acts of Andros had stirred up popular 
feeling against him even further, in the beginning of 1689. News 
of William’s projected invasion came in February, and there 
is reason to believe plans for revolt were soon under way. If the 
Prince of Orange were successful, a popular rising might be safe. 
If James II were reéstablished, the plotters might forget their 
rebellious schemes.”"Perhaps by April eighteenth news giving suf- 
ficient assurance of William’s prosperous position had arrived. 
In any event, on that morning, rumors of an armed rising ran 
through Boston streets. The crowd, awake at once, captured 
Captain George of the frigate Rose. Randolph, Justices Bullivant 
and Foxcroft, and others, were hurried to jail. In the Townhouse, 
whither they had gone with an armed escort, Simon Bradstreet, 
John Richards, and others of the former colonial government, met 
to deliberate. About noon they came out on the balcony which 
looked down King Street, and read to the crowd a “ Declara- 

34. Autobiography; Parentator, p. 121; Andros Tracts, ii, 275. 

35. Autobiography. Sacheverell, born in 1638, died in 1691, was indirectly, at least, 
and quite unintentionally, the cause of the defeat of the Corporation Bill. See p. 228, 
post, and DNB. Sir John Somers became in 1697 Lord High Chancellor of England, 
and was at this time Solicitor General. He was a man of ability and strength, and, one 
remembers, one of the famous “‘Kit-kat Club.” See did. 

36. Palfrey, iv, 16; Andros Tracts, ii, 276; Autobiography; Parentator; T. Hutch- 


inson, History, i, 389, 390 and n. 
37. Parentator, p. 122; Andros Tracts, ii, 276. 


rat ae 


218 INCREASE MATHER 


tion,’”’5* summing up the charges against Andros, and announcing 
the arrest of ‘‘those few /// Men which have been (next to our 
Sins) the grand Authors of our Miseries.’’ Andros was summoned 
by fifteen prominent citizens, who bade him yield the govern- 
ment and the fortifications, “to be preserved and disposed accord- 
ing to orders and direction from the crown of England.” If he 
would consent to this, he was promised security. Otherwise, the 
fort where he had retired would be stormed. The messengers sent 
with the summons intercepted a boat coming from the frigate to 
take Andros off. He now asked a delay in the attack on the fort, 
and before night, came out with his men, and gave himself up. 
He was taken under guard to Mr. Usher’s house, and his followers 
went to jail. On the next day the Castle was surrendered, and the 
frigate stripped. Andros was now imprisoned in the fort. Dudley 
was away, but returned inopportunely, only to be held prisoner at 
his own house. : 

The governor of James II was overthrown, be it noted, in the 
name of the Crown of England. On a small scale New England 
had revolted in the cause of what seemed popular liberty, and had 
defied a Stuart king, just as the mother country had done in the 
preceding months.#? 

A provincial government was set up at once, headed by a 
“Council for the Safety of the People.” Bradstreet 4° was elected 
President. After a convention of delegates from all parts of the 
colony, it was decided to continue the old charter government. 
And, finally, on May twenty-sixth, a ship came in with an order 
to the local government to proclaim William and Mary, King and 
Queen of England. That night saw a great rejoicing in Boston — 
processions, a great public dinner at the Townhouse, and jubilant 
crowds in the streets.4* Andros was in prison, a Protestant ruled 
England, and the old and tried friends of the colony governed it 
once more. 

There is little doubt that the feeling that Andros had been a 
foe, not only of the colonists, but of England, as opposed to 
James II, and, possibly, an ally of France, was generally accepted, 
not only in Massachusetts where many events were translated 
by the popular imagination into evidence for it, but also in Eng- 


38. Andros Tracts, i, 11ff. 

39. I follow the account of the revolt given in Palfrey, ii, 577-587. 
40. Idem, ili, 587, 329, 330 - 

41. Idem, iti, 589, 590. 


THE NEGOTIATION WITH WILLIAM III 219 


land, where Mather took care to keep the idea in mind.” There- 
fore, the revolt could be seen as a justifiable enterprise of English- 
men who sought to crush tyranny and to save for England a 
domain likely to be conveyed treacherously to a foreign power. 
There is no evidence to support the theory that Andros was an 
ardent follower of King James, even at the expense of disloyalty 
to England, but it is by no means hard to see how he came to be 
so regarded. 

Mather, at William III’s court, must have got the news of the 
revolution in Boston some time in June. On the fourth of July he 
went to Hampton Court, where the king had taken up residence, 
and, introduced by Wharton, hastened to make sure that Willjam 
saw New England’s action as the colonists would have him see 
it.# Mather’s words are worth quoting. 

~ I presume,” he said, “your Majesty has been informed of the 
great service which your subjects in New England have done for 


your Majesty, & for the nation, & for the Protestant interest, in | 


securing that territory for king William.” 

No apologies are here for a revolt against a royal governor. 
There is simply a confident trading on the general belief that 
Andros served not the nation but the Stuarts, and, particularly, 
a Stuart rejected by his subjects. 

William assured Mather that “he did kindly accept of what” 
New England had done. In reply the agent asked that a state- 
ment to this effect be sent to the people. The king promised to 
order the Secretary of State to write such a letter. Mather then 
returned to the subject of “ancient rights & privileges.” “To 
which the king returned answer: ‘I do assure you I will do all 
that is in my power.’ ” Matthew Mead, a Puritan who “took 
little pleasure in embroiling himself... in needless or fruitless 
controversies,” had come with his friend from Boston, and he 
took occasion to say that William could do nothing more likely 
to be approved by his dissenting subjects in England ‘‘than to be 
kind to New England.” 4 


42. It seems to me there is evidence sufficient for my statement in the frequency 
with which the matter is alluded to in the State Papers, by Andros’s enemies who made 
the charge, and his friends, who denied it, and the seriousness with which it is discussed 
in pamphlets such as those included in the Andros Tracts. See also, C. M. Andrews, 
Colonial Self-Government, p. 276. 

43. Palfrey, iii, 568-577. 

44. This interview is described in Autobiography, and in Parentator, p. 122. 

45. Nonconformist’s Memorial, ii, 463; Autobiography. 


: 
, 
& 


- 
* 
: 


je 


220 INCREASE MATHER 


They left the royal presence with assurance that their requests 
would be granted. And, on August twelfth, William was as good 
as his word, in that he issued a letter to the New England govern- 
ment, approving of their course.‘ 

With New England’s grievance as to the charter recognized 
in the House of Commons, with a provision for restoration of the 
old patent included in the Corporation Bill, which then seemed 
likely to pass,*7 and with a royal letter approving the overthrow 
of Andros, Mather’s case seemed won. On August twentieth, 
he took leave of his friends, and went to Gravesend and so to 
Deal. A week later, with his son Samuel, he boarded the ship 
that was to take him to Boston.‘ ; 

Meanwhile, several more pamphlets had been doing their work 
in Mather’s cause. Before Andros fell, the colonial agent seems to 
have published in London a pamphlet called “ New-England Vin- 
dicated From the Unjust-Aspersions cast on the former Govern- 
ment there, by some late Considerations Pretending to Shew That 
the Charters in those Colonies were Taken from them on Account 
of their Destroying the Manufactures and Navigation of Eng- 
land.” 4° This was an answer to a pamphlet probably presented 
to Parliament in 1689, during the discussion of the Corporation 
Bill.s° It had maintained that the Massachusetts charter was 
annulled because the colonists had coined money, had taxed 
shipping and imports from England, had passed laws in oppo- 
sition to Parliament, and had insisted upon an oath of fidelity 
to their Commonwealth. Massachusetts was also accused of 
ageressions against the property of other colonies, and was 
charged with making laws against all religions but the Congrega- 
tional, especially against the English church. The colonists were 
declared to have ill-treated English naval officers who wished to 
recruit and provision their vessels, and it was further charged 
that the Bostonians entertained and encouraged pirates. The 
writer insisted, also, that only a few men, deprived of office 
under Andros, desired the old charter. To restore it would be to 


46. Cal. State Papers, Am. and W. I., xiii, % 332. 

47. Autobiography; Macaulay, History, chap. 15. 

48. Autobiography. 

49. For the reasons for ascribing the work to Mather, see Andros Tracts, ii, 113 n., 
and n.12, ante. This would be, then, the first of the three “ Vindications” which Mather 
says that he wrote. It is reprinted in Jdid., pp. 113ff., to which edition all references 
here are made. 


50. Idid., iii, 3ff. 


THE NEGOTIATION WITH WILLIAM III BOT 


draw laborers and manufacturers from England to the colony, 
and, by setting up a virtually independent state, to encourage 
French attempts upon it. If the charter were restored, New 
England mines would be developed without English capital, and 
colonial trade would rival, not complement, that of England. 
Finally, the old charter would dispossess all who had accepted 
erants from the royal governor. 

This work, of course, stood frankly on considerations of pounds 
and pence. English trade and English interests must be pre- 
served. Nothing more reasonable could be written, from the 
point of view of an English merchant. It was by no means an 
attack which could be laughed away. There is small wonder that 
Mather strove to defend the colony against it. 

He limits his reply to the charges specifically directed against 
New England. He denies that many ships have been used 
to export to France and Holland, and to import manufactured 
articles from there, declaring that the colony had not enough 
vessels or goods for such enterprises, and could buy to better 
advantage than on the European continent. Most of the colony’s 
trade was with Jamaica, Barbadoes, and the Caribbean islands, 
and many ships built in New England were paid for by English 
merchants and by them sold, or used in colonial trade. As for 
illegal commerce, he points to the Massachusetts law requiring 
observance of the Navigation Act. Such breaches of law as 
there have been have not been sanctioned by the government, 
but represent no more than “‘the private Transgressions of some 
few particular persons” (p. 114). 

He repeats once more the charge that the charter was un- 
justly vacated. He denies that the colony has coined base money, 
and reminds his readers that the mint was set up in 1652, when 
there was no king in England, and that, at the Restoration, a 
change in practice was decided upon. He shows that other 
colonies and the East India Company have coined money, and, 
when called to account, have been granted pardons. “Why then 
should New-England be esteemed more criminal than other 
Plantations:”’ (p. 116.) 

As for taxes on English shipping, and duties on English goods 
imported, he says there has been but one tax, and that one less 
than in other colonies. Andros continued and increased this 
impost, without popular consent. He prints the “Oath of 


51. Mass. Rec., iv (part 2), 87. 


222 INCREASE MATHER 


Fidelity” required in Massachusetts, as a sufficient answer to 
the accusation in regard to it. He denies territorial aggressions, 
except that the colony aided Charles II to take New York, and 
captured St. John’s, Penobscot, and Port-Royal from the French. 
If the Commissioners of Charles II were slighted, it was because 
their instructions “empowred them to Hear and determine all 
Causes (not by Law, but) according to their sound Discretion, 
which could not be submitted to by the Massachusets, without 
giving up at once their Charter and Priviledges.”’ * 

As to intolerance in religion, Mather admits “that there have 
been some severe and unjustifiable Laws there, in matters of 
Opinion” (p.118). Here is more evidence, if any be needed, as to 
his own broad point of view. He adds, however, that Presby- 
terians are encouraged as well as Congregationalists, and that 
there are no laws against Anglicans. No congregation of the 
Church of England has ever been denied liberty to worship in 
Massachusetts. Naval captains have never been badly used, 
unless they have broken laws, and some of the king’s ships have 
been provisioned without charge. No pirates have been received, 
unless their true character was unknown; and there is a law 
against piracy in Massachusetts as well as in England. 

He argues that the colonists do pay taxes to England in that 
they pay duty on English goods, imported or exported, and that, 
under the old régime, they cost England nothing for protection or 
siipport. He denies flatly that most of the people are content 
under Andros’s government. As for plots of the French, they 
must increase so long as the people are made dissatisfied with 
English rule. To appease the colony by restoring the Charter, 
would be to ensure complete loyalty to England. He reminds us, 
too, that the charter itself demanded a large measure of depend- 
ence, and that the old government was in the king’s name. 

If to restore the charter would be to draw artisans and manu- 
facturers from England, it “is an unsufferable Reflection upon the 
Government of England As if People could live more easie under 
an unlimited and Arbitrary Power,” such as the Massachusetts 
administration in the old days was called by its enemies, “than 
under the regular government of England” (p. 120). And if 
England would profit by the development of mines and other 
industrial undertakings in New England, she has much to gain 


52. Cf. T. Hutchinson, History, i, 535ff., especially 536. 


1) Me 


A FURTHER 


ee ATION 
_ New-ENGLAND, 


. | FROM”. «J 
| Fall Sungeftions | in a late Scandalouis Pane, Polendind 

| to thew, Ibe Be es oLAN : des ea fn 
Charters itd hofe ND, 


ly he fhould be Wit in his own conceit: Which confideration may it y 
fomething by way af Anfwer to alate {candalous Dilcourler, aes his no lets Folly : 
m than Forgery, thonghr meet to Calamniate the good Proteftants in New- England. 
We may take aa Eftimate of this Anlwerer's Integrity : in that ia the very fir Paragra ph 
of his Difcourle he doth affere a pal ble Lota, with a Defign thereb ae Mi 


[: was the Wite rane Advice, , That in fo oe a Fool fhoula be atte jel tags 


chief to a good People. 


“For he foggelts, That the Pats 


rhe Inconventences that would 


: ‘Royal JurildiGion. _ 


And will not the man nee can devife uch Stories 2 
_ ‘The Charter of the Afsfachi “ Sere vs era 
Year till 1640, there was no othe atliament. 
As for the Renowned Petlamenc = 1640. all ¢ 
ja theie Thoughts to Leflen the Priviledges of New Eng 


Nor doth Sir Ferdinanda Gerges, in his Account of New Exrland, 


. courfer pretends. For he makes no mention of the Pastianete bat what | afer 
by King and ee Arno 1622. which was Six years before the. Charter of the 
chufets Was in rela \ 

Sach is the Fore Fead of this Difcourfer, as that he fears not. to Afra, That i it was never 


. ~ known, that any of the Governours in Nev-England who were cholen by Charters, didtake — 


the Oath ne in the Act for Navigation. Whengs, there is nothing more certain, or 
re known smonett thole oe ate Arguainted with what hath beeg done in New-Eng- 


< Bes the. Vindicator of le be with Falfity, in tay - 
dng, That the word Grmmonrel was Repealed in thelr Law-Book, and the word Tiefe 
dillion inierted inkead . 
In Anfwer to this, we- at only fubjoyn the Printed Law of the Ate cichefers. en, 
made i in the Year 1681, and then leave it to the Judgarenc of all et _— wate 
be clon di all Fath od ‘Trot, 


t the Twnlfib Setbion of the Capit 
spiny, | Rebellion; axd:the Fouyeenth Seftion of rhe bes Laws, 
Law vifrrrang re Chrifimals, p. 57, $8. and she ‘ 

hereby Repeaie 


ng is 
O, o. Woe was Sit Yoke, 
ed Foc o carry forme of the {ohabl 
ifho > i was fo 2 re as 0 





FIRST PAGE OF INCREASE MATHER’S SECOND 
“VINDICATION OF NEW ENGLAND” 














(2) oe 
Taere was to Law on his fide, but on the contrary he broke the Peace: And the G: 
vernment in Beton is to be commended in that They did not countenance him in his Extra- 
vapancics. i : oS 
T he Difcourfer further ith, Thar the Atafachafers turn'd the Kings Joftices out of their 
Seats at Bojfon in the Year 1668. after They had been three Years Empowered, Oe. 
but this is very falle. There was no fuch thing then done in Boffen, only in the Province 
of Adayn, they of Bffon did at the earneft Solicitation of the Inhabitants do fomething of 
that nature: Which Province the Afiffachufers have fince that bought of che Proprietor Mr. 
Gorges, which has Myed all Controverties.  —— 
As forthe Commiffion granted by King Charles the Second, to thele Aree Gentlemen 
were fentio New-England in the Year 1665. ic did Empower them not only to determine 
the Bounds of the Calonies, which was noc objeCted againft, bet to hear all other Caufes by 
wi y of Appeal, and then to determine them according to their good and found Difcretion. 
he Farnous Caek faith, That fach a Claufe ina Commiffion makes it ilegal, burin as m 
as this Dilcourfer juftifieth ir, that is a fufficient Indication chat he fs one of thole ill M 
who of late have been carrying on defigns for Arbirrary Power, 
For him thus to difcover himfelf at this time of day, does not argue himto be a wile M 
He pretends that the Afafachuferts Colony is buts teath of the Colonies of 
and thac the People there will never unite againft the French, which things are 
true, - ee Sse 
_ For the Afaffachsferts are more than halfthe Coantry, and the four Colonies did many years 
. ago enter into a Confederation, that if an Enemy fhould fall on any one of them, the reft 
would look onthemfelves as concerned, and therefore they were for a long time called the 
his Affertion, That when one of tke Co 
4 feruple whether they id ac~ 
i People. _ 





eligion, as : 
yelpopdence acthat Time, isi‘ Dl 
And ifwe may conjecture what thall be hereafter, by what is already paft, the Reftoring 
of Charters will hive a very good Iflue, as that War had, without any ce to England of 
_ither Men or Money. — 
As for what he aera concerning the Copper-mines, lappofed to be ia New England, it tsb 

- Crambe bis Coita, the fame that was in the Coofiderations formerly anfwered, which ic would 
be naufeous here to repeat: Only it gives us joft canfe to tufpect that the fame venomtons | 
“wrote both thefe Pamphlets.  —r—___ se - 

It is Nonience to affirm, That the Charters of De as make them independent on the 
Crown of England: Whereas if they be infpected, it will be found that by vertue thereof thofe 
_ Plantations are dependant on England; nor have they any {ach unlimited Powers granted tothem 
- as this vain pretender has faliely and malicionfly fapgetted. ‘ 
_Befides, Intereft obliges them to a dependance on England: without it they cannot carry 
their Fith and Lumber to the Engit(s Plantations, to make Returns for England, wherein a ver 
great part of their Livelihood Oe coms, _. _ 

Both the Charters in England and New-England, were taken away by the fame fo Met 
and on the fame Grounds, wz. in orderto the Eftablithingiof Arbitrary Government. Englasd 
hasnot been a gainer, but the contrary, by what has been done to New-England, — 
Inasmuch as the Honourable Houle of Commons have Voted that the taking a 
ters of New-England was Illegal, and a Grievance, and that they fhould be re 

again; and inafmuch as the People there have of late done a great Service fo 
(whom God grant long to Live andto Reign,) and for the Englifh Nation, 
teftant Intereft, by fecaring the Fortificationsin and near Ba/fen, for the Servic 
of Orange, (iot knowing that He was then King) and for the Parliamen 

by they have merited Kncouragement: Weno way doubr but ¢ 

mon Deliverance : And we know that our Wife Senators will.pot f 
finuations ef thofe ill Men, whole defigns ones are, that good 


% 


= 










jetts may be depriv'd of their ancient Rights and 


SECOND PAGE OF INCREASE MATHER’S SECOND 
“VINDICATION OF NEW ENGLAND” 


THE NEGOTIATION WITH WILLIAM III Peg 


by granting the charter, for, with the return of the old rulers, 
local capital would be offered to support local enterprise. 

Finally, if to give back the patent would invalidate Andros’s 
land grants, it would do no more than return property to its 
rightful owners, who “subdued a Wilderness, and... have main- 
tained and defended i it, to the enlargment of the King’ s Domin- 
ions; hoping, as in Reason they might, that their Posterity should 
enjoy the benefit thereof” (p. 122). What New England asks, 
is but the rights claimed by English corporations. Shall New 
England alone be denied? 

Mather closes with a reference to another pamphlet, listing 
laws repugnant to those of England.* He is content with pointing 
out that the statutes referred to have, for the most part, been 
repealed, one never existed, the word Gomera ah “so much 
complain’d of” was changed to Jurisdiction, and the comments 
offered by the English writer are “but the Ebullitions of a spite- 
mulpapirit’?/(p. 123). 

Mather’s work struck home enough to call forth an answer 
which does little more than reassert the original charges, or give 
the lie direct on one or two matters of fact.54 At our distance we 
cannot fairly decide the merits of each point in debate. It is even 
harder now than it was in 1689 to decide just how many men 
longed for the old charter, or how prominent capitalists felt about 
the proposed change. But we can be sure that, where verification 
is possible; Mather was more than a match for his opponents. 
Exact authority can still be found for many of his statements in 
rebuttal. Of course, not all the laws he cites in support of his con- 
tentions were strictly enforced; but, even so, he has better basis 
for his argument than his enemies could find for theirs. When 
it came to general dicta, conditioned by personal views and local 
interests, his doctrine is certainly quite as easy to swallow as 
that urged against him. 

It was in answer to the last pamphlet mentioned above that he 
wrote the second of his “‘Vindications” of New England. Of 
this, but one copy is known to me, and it has never been reprinted 
or ascribed to Mather. Through the courtesy of its owner, 
- William Gwinn Mather, it is reproduced here in full. As for its 
authorship, it 1s most probably by the author of ‘‘New-England 
Vindicated,” since it is a defence of that book. Moreover, we 
have Mather’s statement that he wrote three vindications of New 


53. Andros Tracts, iti, 13ff. 64. Ibid., ii, 135ff. 


224 INCREASE MATHER 


England, and no known document is so likely to represent the 
second as this printed sheet of two pages. Its style and form 
accord with what we know of Mather’s literary habit. 

In it he proceeds at once to answer the author of the “Short 
Discourse.”’ He begins by showing the falsity of his opponent’s 
suggestion that Parliament opposed New England’s charter 
rights in the time of Charles I. This answer, compared with the 
“Short Discourse,” leaves him the advantage.’° He supports 
what he has said of the changing of the word ““Commonwealth” 

“Jurisdiction.” He gives another side, at least, to a story 
about Sir John Weyborn. He explodes the statement that 
Massachusetts is but a tenth of New England.’?7 One need go no 
further in comparing the answer and the book it attacked. It 
is enough to say that Mather spake whereof he knew, with more 
heat than he showed elsewhere, but always with a prudent eye on 
the facts. He winds up, cleverly, with a reference to the recog- 
nition of New England’s case by the House of Commons, and 
with a reminder that the Andros revolt was “for the Service of 
the Prince of Orange.” 

On July 30, 1689, there was licensed for the press “A Brief 
Relation of the State of New England.” 5§ Whoever wrote the 
original draft, there is reason to believe that its final form was 
due to Mather.5® Certainly there is nothing in the style to 
disprove his authorship, and the arguments offered are those 
with which he was most conversant. There are, too, some pas- 
sages agreeing almost word for word with the “ New-England 
Vindicated.”’ °° Purporting to be “a Letter to a Person of 
Quality,” the pamphlet summarizes the story of the settling of 
New England. The action against the charter 1s called ‘a mere 
Rape” of “Priviledges.” Since then, the colony has hastened 
toward ruin. Andros, sent with a Se eesliik “absolutely de- 

55. See facsimile reproductions, facing pp. 223, 224. 

56. Cf. Andros Tracts, ii, 138, with paragraphs 5 and 6 of Mather’s work. 

57. Cf. the facsimiles, and Andros Tracts, ii, 140, 141,138. See also, Channing, ii, 160. 

58. “A Brief Relation of the State of New England, From the Beginning of that 
Plantation To this Present Year, 1689.” Printed in Andros Tracts, ii, 149ff. What seems 
to be a first draft of this is printed i in MHS Coll., Series 3, i, 93-101. 

$9. Andros Tracts, i, 150. 

60. Cf. Idid., p. 115, lines 15-17, and p. 155, lines 13-15. Cf. also, p. 114, “That the 
Act of Navigation should be strictly observed” ; and p. 156, where identically the same 
phrase appears: (114) “the Government . . . is not to be blamed for the private Trans- 
gressions of some few particular persons”’; (156) ‘“‘the Transgression of some few par- 


ticular Persons ought not to be charged as the fault of the Government”; and other 
correspondences apparent on a reading of the two tracts. 


THE NEGOTIATION WITH WILLIAM III D9 As 


structive to the fundamentals of the English government,” was 
overthrown by the people, who did “Unanimously Declare for 
the Prince of Orange, and the Parliament of England.” Admitting 
that the colony may have sinned against English law in the past, 
and that they have been too severe in regard to “matters relating 
to Conscience,” the writer urges in defence that amends have 
been made and that now “leading men, and the generality of the 
People are of a more moderate Temper.” The main argument is 
that England has much to gain from the continuance of Massa- 
chusetts in its former rights and privileges. In support Mather 
reminds his readers that other British colonies are largely depend- 
ent on New England for many commodities, that New England 
buys more English goods, and exports to the mother country such 
necessaries as ‘““Sugars,” “Tobacco,” and “Indico” (pp. 155ff.). 
The colony has manifest advantages for cheap shipbuilding, and 
the people are well trained to serve the king in arms, against such 
enemies as the French. New England is the key to America. Sir 
Edmund Andros, of French extraction, and so of French sym- 
pathies, might have played into hostile hands, had not a loyal 
citizenry forestalled him by rebelling in the cause of King 
William. New England should, therefore, be given her old privi- 
leges, in order that she may prosecute the war against France 
without cost to England. The next paragraph, not in the original 
draft, refers to the college and its growth. In this connection 
there is quoted a letter of Abraham Kick,® of Holland, to Queen 
Mary. It speaks of New England’s achievements, and prays for 
royal favor to the dwellers there. This is followed up by a refer- 
ence to the good work done in spreading the Gospel among the 
Indians; and here is quoted Mather’s letter to Leusden, originally 
printed as “ De Successu Evangelii.”” The pamphlet ends with 
a plea to all Protestants to support New England. Surely none 
but Papists can be its enemies. 

Another pamphlet, quite different in tone, called “A Vindica- . 
tion of New-England,” probably issued some time in 1689, has 
been ascribed to Mather, or, at least, to someone writing largely 

61. Cf. Andros Tracts, ii, 150. This, of course, is an argument for Mather’s author- 
ship of the pamphlet in its final form, since he urged the college’s claims whenever he 
es This is also added to the original draft, and again there is evidence for Mather’s 
authorship, since Kick was his friend. See MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 596-599, and 


Andros Tracts, ii, 162 n, 
63. Also added to the original draft, and also likely to represent Mather’s work. 


226 INCREASE MATHER 


from his dictation.“* The arguments for this view are that it 
deals with matters which occurred in New England, and goes into 
such detail that one is led to believe a well-informed colonist must 
have had a hand in it. Again, Mather says that he wrote three 
vindications of New England, and before the “second vindica- 
tion,” discussed above, was discovered, it seemed necessary to 
include this tract as his, in order to identify the three he wrote. 
On the other hand, there are grave objections to a belief in his 
authorship of “A Vindication of New-England.” 

First of all, the work contains an express statement that it 
came from “the Pen of one, who altho’ he never spent 7 years of 
his Life in any part of America, yet has been so inquisitive after 
the Affairs of New-England, and had so much acquaintance with 
the worthy Agents of that Country,” ° that he is able to write 
intelligently in the colony’s behalf. This statement has been held 
to be a technical truth, meaning no more than that Mather 
dictated his book to an amanuensis, or that its final form was 
due to another hand than his. But the book was printed in 
Boston and not, apparently, in London, where Mather was, and 
where his obvious field for controversy lay. Again, the style is not 
that used by him in any other book up to this time. Admitting 
that this is an insecure basis, by itself, for denying the tract to 
him, it has, none the less, great force when coupled with the 
fact that the work was anonymous, that Mather nowhere 
specifically claims it, and that it came out with an explicit state- 
ment that it was not by a New England man. Read it with the 
“Narrative of the Miseries of New-England,” which Mather 
surely wrote, or with his later ““Reasons for Confirming the 
Charter,” and one must decide either that he wrote here in a 
style he used nowhere else, or that the book was not his. There 
is here a violence of phrase, a delight in the sound of words, and 
in playing upon them, frequent quotations, and a striving for 
effect — all not only foreign to the style of Mather’s known 
works, and contrary to his often reiterated doctrine of sim- 
plicity in writing, but also likely to impress far from favorably 
those upon whose good opinion he relied for success.’ Phipps 
could have given the same facts, or Ashurst, or Cotton Mather, or 


64. This is printed in Andros Tracts, ii, 19ff. For the question of its authorship, see 
Ibid., p.20, and what follows below. 

65. Ibid., p. 78. 

66. Ibid., p. 20. 67. Ibid., pp. 21ff. 


THE NEGOTIATION WITH WILLIAM III ae 


Hutchinson, or Sewall, or Major Thompson, and without the 
same risk of discrediting a cause of which Mather was the diplo- 
matic champion. 

It seems probable that, if the “second vindication” we have 
glanced at had been known previously, the tract now under dis- 
cussion would never have been linked with Mather’s name. 
Denying it to him, we can still identify his three “vindications,”’ 
and, therefore, there remains no ground for believing that he 
wrote it, while there is the evidence of style, of content, and of 
the writer’s own statement, to dispel the belief that it was his.° 

Whoever wrote it, ““A Vindication of New-England”’ gave 
forceful utterance to New England’s case. Its distinction lies 
not in its facts, which were those that the colonists believed to be 
true, but in its abuse of the opposition. It is an excursion into the 
field of downright vilification of political enemies, but it is the 
work of a man who could compose lively and heated special 
pleading designed for the ears of the man in the street. Such 
tracts were not uncommon, or by the standards of the time dis- 
creditable.to their authors, but no one of them, in this period, 1s 
known to have come from Mather.®? 

Aboard ship, in the lower Thames, he knew that his printed 
works and his powerful friends were active in his interests. With 
the passing of the Corporation Bill, Massachusetts would have 
her charter once more. He could go back to Boston as the man 
who had restored his country’s government, and relieved the 
people from what they felt to be tyranny. His letters gave his 
views, and extracts from two of them, together with a paragraph 

68. The arguments in favor of Mather’s authorship of this tract prove too much, 
for quite as many arguments can be adduced to support a theory that he wrote all the 
other anonymous tracts in defence of New England which are reprinted in the Andros 
Tracts. If we say that the fact that the style is unlike his and that the work is said to 
be by a writer not a native of New England, is not evidence against his having written 
the Vindication, then there is no reason for not assigning to him any other pamphlet 
of this period, provided it deals with New England’s affairs, from the point of view 
held by his sympathizers. For other pamphlets avowedly not written by natives of 
New England, though dealing with New England’s cause, cf. Andros Tracts, i, 194, 
ii, 268, iii, 190. Surely not all these were by Increase Mather, since he would certainly 
have claimed them; and yet it is quite as easy to believe that he did write them as to 
accept the Vindication as his. 

6g. Similar in tone is the tract printed in Andros Tracts, ii, 231ff., and not ascribed 
to Mather by Whitmore or anyone else, except J. T. Adams, who, in his Founding of 
New England, p. 445, quotes from it, as from a writing of Mather’s. He, however, made 
a slip in reading the Andros Tracts, since in his footnote (445 n.), he refers to Andros 


Tracts, ii, 230, a passage which ascribes to Increase Mather not the tract Mr. Adams 
quotes, but the one which precedes it in the volume. 


228 INCREASE MATHER 


from an English journal, were printed as a broadside in Boston. 
The heading was “The Present State of the New-English 
Affairs,” and a significant note explains that “This is Published 
to prevent False Reports.” 7° 

The citizen of Massachusetts, reading this sheet behind his 
counter or at the tavern, found much of good comfort. From 
Mather’s pen he learned that the Corporation Bill had been twice 
read, and referred to a Committee on Emendations. The clauses 
referring to New England had met with no great opposition. He 
read that the king had approved the rising against Andros, and 
had sent a letter to this effect. He was assured that the Earl 
of Monmouth had espoused the colonial cause, as had most of the 
Privy Council and parliamentary leaders. And, in the last para- 
graph, there was the news that by an order dated July 30, 1689, 
the king had commanded the return of Andros, Randolph, and 
the other captives of the Boston revolution, to answer the charges 
against them in England. © 

Before the good people of Boston had a chance to hear of him 
through this “‘first newspaper,” ™ Mather’s plans suddenly 
changed. Little Samuel, his son, who accompanied him to 
England, keeps well in the background till September 3, 1689, 
but he then steps forward in no uncertain way. On that day he 
was taken very ill, and on the morrow he was known to have 
smallpox. So Mather stayed with him, and the ship sailed with- 
out them. By October third, Samuel could travel, and his father 
took him back to London.” 

Once there, he saw that the delay in sailing might be no act 
of blind fate, but rather a manifestation of God’s mercy. The 
Tories were gaining strength, and with the decline of the Whigs, 
the chances of the Corporation Bill grew less. There was much 
to do, to keep up his political fences, and Mather went once more 
to work. On January second, the select committee appointed to 
discuss the bill brought in its report. Too zealous Whigs, led by 
William Sacheverell, moved the adoption of a clause exacting 
severe penalties from many great Tories. The controversy which 
resulted ended only in William’s prorogation of Parliament. So, 
in a dispute not of their making and fostered by one of their 

70. Reprinted in Andros Tracts, ii, 15ff., and, in facsimile, for the Club of Odd 
Volumes, Boston, 1902. 

71. Cf. W. G. Shillaber, Introduction with facsimile reprint of 1902, cited in note 70, 


above. 
72. Autobiography; Parentator, p. 154. 


THE NEGOTIATION WITH WILLIAM III 229 


allies, perished, for the present, New Englanders’ hopes for 
regaining their charter by Parliamentary act. Nor did oppor- 
tunity come again, for the Tories took the saddle, and Mather’s 
Whig allies were for the present of little influence.’ 

The delay worked further harm, for the opponents of Mather’s 
object had time to present their case in more detail than before. 
Randolph wrote constantly, tuning his recital of grievances to 
suit the prejudices of each Englishman he addressed. He urged 
that no decision be given as to the charter, until he had come to 
England. The Episcopalians of Boston sharply accused the 
Puritans of a variety of crimes.7> John Usher, who had been 
treasurer for Andros, came to London in the summer of 1689, and 
he was by no means silent.” 

Massachusetts, meanwhile, governed itself as it had under the 
charter, without official sanction save for the king’s letter grant- 
ing those in office authority to continue. Mather and Sir Henry 
Ashurst were officially recognized as agents of the colony; and 
at the end of 1689, two physicians, Mather’s classmate, Elisha 
Cooke, a staunch defender of the old charter, and Thomas 
Oakes, were associated with them in their mission.77 Obviously 
New England was far from settled. No one could rest content 
until some form of government had royal approval. The present) 
administration, under a temporary warrant, could be but a |" 
hand-to-mouth affair. And, as England had been at war with | 
France since a few months after William’s accession, so New 
England faced Indian enemies, and, sometimes, eit French 
allies. In April, Massachusetts sent a small force to attack Port 
Royal in Acadia. The leader was no other than Sir William 
Phipps, who had turned from Mather’s side in London, to volun- 

73. Autobiography; Andros Tracts, ii, 276. 

74. See letters from Randolph listed in Cal. State Papers, Am. and W. I., vol. xiii, 
and Palfrey, iv, 62, 63, 64-66. 

75. Andros Tracts, 11, 28ff. 

76. Palfrey, iv, 66. In Sewall’s diary for July 29, 1689, we read: “‘Standing in the 
Shop about 7. mane, Mr. John Usher comes to the door, which surpriseth me... .I go 
and acquaint Mr. Mather, who has heard nothing of it. He hastens to tother end of the 
Town. The Lord save N. E. I spoke to Mr. Usher not to do harm, as knowing the great 
King we must finally appear before: because he spoke of going to the King.” MHS 
Coll., Series 5, v, 268. 

77. Palfrey, iv, 26 and n. For Cooke, see J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, 1, 
§20-525; and for Oakes, Idid., 11, 130-132. For the instructions to the agents, see Cai. 
State Papers, Am. and W. I., xiii, ¥739. They were to wait upon the king, obtain a 


full confirmation of the ancient charter, correct misrepresentations as to the late 
Revolution, and represent matters relative to defence. 


230 INCREASE MATHER 


teer his services in the colonial campaign against the French. 
On May twenty-third Port Royal fell before him, and before he 
returned, he destroyed also the French defences at the mouth of 
the St. John.78 

The four New England agents were no longer where words 
alone could serve. In March, Andros, Randolph, and their 
friends were in London, and on April tenth the agents were 
summoned before the Lords of the Committee to testify against 
their deposed governors. They asked for a week in which to pre- 
pare their charges.7? One would give much to know what passed 
between them, but on April seventeenth no one volunteered to 
sign the accusations against Andros.*° 

Mather has left no doubt that he favored signing.** He could 
hardly feel otherwise. After charging Sir Edmund with many 
crimes, pamphleteering against him, and preventing his reap- 
pointment, to fail to sign the papers against him, would be to put 
himself and his cause in an awkward place. But there were now 
four agents, and unless all accused Andros, it must appear that 
New England was divided in its sentiment toward him. This 
would mean that the agents who did sign would have to fight 
alone against such allies as the ex-governor could muster, and, 
moreover, that their position might be easily interpreted as due to 
personal spite rather than as an expression of the will of their 
government. 

Now, Cooke and Oakes were fresh from Massachusetts. They 
had not committed themselves in London, by preferring charges 
against James II’s governor. How Ashurst felt we can only guess, 
but it seems probable that he shared Mather’s views. There was 
a possibility for disagreement among the agents, and it was 
promptly realized. 

On April seventeenth they appeared with Andros before the 
Lords of the Committee for Trade and Plantations. Sir Edmund 
was armed with a charge against the colony for revolt against 
lawful authority. Sir John Somers, who seems to have been the 
colonists’ chief adviser, said that the agents were prepared to 
defend New England. Thus called upon, they recited their 


grievances against Andros. The President of the Committee, Sir 


78. Palfrey, iv, 49. 

79. Idem, iv, 66, 67; Cal. State Papers, Am. and W. I., xiii, % 846. 
80. Idid.; Palfrey, iv, 67 and n. 3. 

81. Autobiography. 


JOHN LORD SOMERS 
Baron « y 
Lord High Chancellor 
of’ England 
Obit Lyd. 


i 





SIR JOHN SOMERS 
From a painting in the National Portrait Gallery 


> 


é 
AT Ir 





THE NEGOTIATION WITH WILLIAM III 231 


Thomas Osborne, Marquis of Carmarthen, asked who imprisoned 
the governor. To which Somers replied, “The Country, my 
Lord.” Osborne declared: “The country and the people, that 1s 
nobody. Let us see A. B. C. D. the persons that will make it 
their owne case. ... That Paper is not signed by anybody.” Somers 
insisted that the agents were there not as individuals but as 
representatives of a country. At this point, one of them, and, as 
we have seen, it is most likely to have been Mather, whispered to 
Somers that some of them would sign. But he advised against it. 
An investigation of Andros’s acts would have been impolitic, as 
calling too much attention to others of James II’s emissaries 
who had followed similar instructions with equal faithfulness. 
To inquire into their deeds would have been to annoy more than 
one man still in high place, and might even have directed un- 
favorable notice to certain members of the Committee itself. 
Cooke and, presumably, Oakes, took Somers’s counsel at its face 
value. For Mather to sign alone, or with Ashurst only, would 
have been useless to his cause, and dangerous to his own position 


in influential circles. So the Privy Council received a report . 


from the Committee affirming that no one appeared to sign 
charges against Andros. He was dismissed with no further trial, 
and, a year later, became Governor of Virginia.® 

Mather inevitably lost ground at once. He had elaborately 
constructed something approaching a real political organization, 
with a definite platform—the rescue of New England from 
tyranny by the restoration of the charter. For this programme it 
was necessary to have a tyrant to show, and to have Andros go 
scot free, was to wipe out, so far as the average observer was con- 
cerned, all the force of Mather’s complaints of the “grievous”’ 
state of the colony since the Quo Warranto. By the affair of 
April 17, 1690, “those oppressors did not only come off with 
flying colors, but insulted over their adversaries.” *3 Powle, now a 
member of the Privy Council, assured Mather that great pressure 
was being brought to restore Andros to office in Boston. The Earl 
of Monmouth declared that the agents had cut New England’s 
throat, by imprisoning a governor whom they could not prove 
guilty. The Earl of Devonshire, John Hampden, and others of 
Mather’s friends, were “extremely scandalized.”’ ** William him- 

82. MHS Proc., xlv, 647-650; Palfrey, iv, 67, 68; T. Hutchinson, History, i, 394, 


395; Andros Tracts, ii, 173, 174, and notes. 
83. Autobiography. 84. Ibid. 


aie ip) INCREASE MATHER 


self was not likely to be pleased with the turn of affairs. He had 
listened patiently to complaints against Andros, and had ap- 
proved his overthrow, only to have him virtually acquitted of 
any crime. 

With little room to hope for Parliamentary rehabilitation of 
the old charter, the agents turned to considering whether their 
colony’s case might not be brought from Chancery before the 
King’s Bench, presided over by Sir John Holt. This plan failed.*s 
There remained but one other course. If the courts and Parlia- 
ment could not or would not help, there was left only the trial of 
what might be done by a direct appeal to the king. A petition 
was prepared and presented by the Earl of Monmouth. William 
referred the matter to Holt and Pollexfen, the Lord Chief Jus- 
tices, to Somers, and to Treby, the Attorney-General. Mather 
seems to have had some favor in their eyes, for he was allowed to 
be present at their deliberations. They drew up a new charter, 
and sent it to the king. He referred it,on January 1, 1691, to 
the Committee for Trade and Plantations. 

William was hardly accessible to the agents in 1690. In June 
he was busy with Irish rebels. July first was the day of the 
Battle of the Boyne, and the king did not come back to England 
till September. Then internal affairs demanded his care. He was 
content, perforce, to leave New England’s case unsettled. Per- 
haps the agents, too, for most of the year, were glad to bide their 
time. News must have reached them, telling how Phipps, now the 
colonists’ military leader, prepared an expedition against Quebec. 
Should he be successful, New England might well bear to William 


news of lands won from the French, with a reasonable hope that 


86. Palfrey, iv, 70, and references given there. 

86. Andros Tracts, ii, 276, 277; Cal. State Papers, Am. and W.I., xiii, 1276. There 
we find that the agents wished the King to reéstablish the old Corporation with a grant 
of all former lands or privileges. The Corporation should consist of all such as were 
formerly, or shall be hereafter, made free, and Maine should be included. New Hamp- 
shire, too, should be under the Corporation. There should be a general Assembly 
of representatives, and the election of general officers should be by majority of all the 
freemen present, or sending votes. ‘The Assembly should have power to erect courts 
of judicature. It should be expressly denied the right to make laws repugnant to those 
of England, but should have power to impose necessary taxes for the support of the 
government, and increased authority to raise militia, pursue enemies, and erect forti- 
fications. Grants made to individuals in New England should be confirmed. Liberty 
of fishing should be limited with respect to the rights of landowners. 

It will be noted that this document provides for a suffrage restricted to freemen, 
but does not imply that freemen are to be chosen on religious grounds, but rather the 
contrary, since conformity to English law is emphasized. 


THE NEGOTIATION WITH WILLIAM III 233 


he might, in return, be pleased to grant their requests. But 
insufficient preparations, faulty timing of two campaigns, internal 
dissensions in the colonial ranks, and Frontenac’s promptness and 
skill, saved Quebec and New France. On November nineteenth 
Phipps was at home in Boston, a defeated man. He had lost two 
hundred lives, and the colony had spent fifty thousand pounds. 
Most of this fund had been borrowed. Paper currency was issued, 
and its prompt depreciation brought home to every man the 
gravity of the colony’s reverses.*7 

In such straits, the government sent Phipps to England once 
more, to seek aid with which to renew the attack on Quebec, and, 
perhaps, in order that he might add his pleas to the agents’, in 
their efforts at court. He was a general fresh from a disastrous 
venture, but he was not without some support from the colonists. 
He had sacrificed some of his own property in the public in- 
terest, and of him Sewall wrote Mather: ‘“‘ You will hear various 
Reports of Sir William Phips. I have discoursed with all sorts, 
and find that neither Activity nor Courage were wanting in 
Him; and the form of the Attack was agreed on by the Council 
imate. 

His Quebec expedition had afforded to the agents none of the 
political capital they had hoped for; but if Phipps, in person, 
could give them any help, he was surely welcome. If 1690 had 
been a year of little progress for them, it had offered abundant 
opportunity to their foes. Andros had made a skilful defence. 
Randolph, in England, was no less active and adroit in his 
attacks than he had been in Boston, and he pursued constantly 
his charges as to New England’s violation of the English trade 
laws. Sponsored by him, there appeared “‘New England’s Fac- 
tion Discovered,” a pamphlet which assailed the colonial cause 
in general, and Mather in particular, devoting most of its space 
to a pamphlet, ““News from New-England,” believed to have 
been his. This work, long unknown, has recently been discovered, 
but it is hard to find proof that Mather wrote it. There is nothing 
in its style or content which prevents our ascribing it to him, but 
he nowhere claims it specifically, nor is Randolph’s laying it at 
his door based on anything more than personal opinion. Very 
probably Mather arranged for its publication, perhaps he edited 

87. Palfrey, iv, 50-58. For the doings of the agents at this period cf. MHS Proc., 


xlv, 644 ff. 
88. Palfrey, iv, 58; MHS Coll., Series 6, i, 115. 


234 INCREASE MATHER 


it, and certainly he must have welcomed it as one more contri- 
bution to his cause.*9 

Randolph, or his deputy, in replying to it, answers ably the 
attack on Andros, so far as this concerned disloyalty or acts not 
sanctioned by his commission; but, on several points upon which 
we have knowledge to-day, “‘ New England’s Faction Discovered” 
shows a blithe tendency toward politically effective exaggeration 
or downright falsehood.°° 

John Palmer printed a more temperate defence of Sir Ed- 
mund,% and others took care that the authorities should no longer 
lack antidotes for Mather’s persuasive arguments. Clearly 
the agents had much to do, to repel such opponents. To the 
Lords of the Committee they answered Randolph’s remarks 
as to New England’s observance of trade laws. Some one of 
them, or of their friends, wrote ““The Humble Address of the 
Publicans of New-England,” a work as scurrilous as the “ Vindi- 
cation of New-England,” % and one which suggests that it came 
from the same pen. Neither these, however, nor “Further 
Quaeries upon the Present State of New English Affairs,” present 
any evidence of having been Mather’s work.” 

The agents were busy, then, in 1690, answering or explaining 
away the charges of their enemies. Early in 1691 William went 
to Holland and in his absence nothing definite could be done. 
But Mather was not idle, and printed his “Reasons for the 


89. A copy of this work, a single sheet printed on both sidés, is now in the library 
of W. G. Mather of Cleveland, by whose courtesy I have been enabled to examine it. 
The title is, “News from New-England: in A letter Written to a Person of Quality, 
wherein is a true Account of the present State of that Countrey, with respect to the late 
Revolution, and the present War with the Indians there. As Also Of A Pretended 
Miracle of the French Fesuits in that part of the World.” It is marked “Licens’d Feér. 
27, 1689. F. F.” [i.e. Febr. 27, 1689-90]. The imprint is, “London, Printed for John 
Dunton, at the Raven in the Poultrey, 1690.” 

go. For example, the writer says: ““The Church of England, altho commanded to be 
particularly countenanced and encouraged, was wholly destitute of a place to perform 
Divine Service... until Sir. Z. 4. by advice of the Council, borrowed the new Meeting- 
house.”” (Andros Tracts, ii, 211.) As we have seen, the Church of England did have a 
place to worship, given them by the Puritans, and the word “borrowed” in connec- 
tion with Andros’s use of the meeting-house is obviously amusing. Mather is spoken 
of as a “pretended Teacher of the Gospel,” a phrase more effective than truthful. One 
may find further evidences of Randolph’s manner, by comparing the tract with such 
historical records as we have. 

OY, Pids, 1, orats 

92. Lbid., 11, 127fF. 

93. Ibid., pp. 231-270. 

94. Lbid., 1, 194ff. 


THE NEGOTIATION WITH WILLIAM III 235 


Confirmation of the Charters.” * In this pamphlet he argues 
that the settlers in America enlarged the British empire, in 
the belief that they and their posterity might enjoy charter 
rights. ““Nor may we suppose that in the Dayes of K. William 
They shall be deprived of what was granted to them by K. Yames, 
and K. Charles | and continued to them by K. Charles untill the 
last year of his Reign”’ (p. 225). He refers to William’s state- 
ment that he hoped to secure to the English their rights and 
liberties. He reminds his readers of the royal letter of August 
12, 1689, which ordered that the government of New England 
be settled to the satisfaction of the English subjects in the 
colony. From this he argues for the charter, maintaining what 
he no doubt believed, that the majority of the people desired the 
return of the old government. To refuse it would be to breed 
discontent, and, thereby, to create increased danger from the 
French. New Englanders’ loyalty was shown in their revolt 
against Andros, which Mather dubs “that glorious Cause which 
mew brince) declared’ for’) \(p.)227).); The .\Connecticut; Rhode 
Island, and Plymouth charters were never taken away by legal 
process. They are, therefore, still valid, and since Massachusetts 
asks merely the same rights that they conferred, she should not 
be denied, particularly since her own patent was illegally revoked. 
On this point, he urges the House of Commons’ recognition of 
the prosecution of the Quo Warranto, as a grievance. Moreover, 
since the charters have been annulled, the colony has had to have 
financial aid from England, as never before. And, finally, the 
charters made the colonies dependent, and limited their activities 
to those prescribed by English law. 

This pamphlet referred to the cases of all the New England 

gs. “Reasons for the Confirmation of the Charters belonging to the several Corpora- 
tions in New-England,” reprinted in Andros Tracts, ii, 225ff. A similar tract, referring 
only to Massachusetts, differing slightly, also appeared. The variations between the 
two are given in the reprint cited above. For the ascription to Mather, see note 12, 
ante. Mather’s works written in the interest of New England, seem, then, to have been: 
(1) A Narrative of the Miseries of New England; (2) New England Vindicated; (3) A 
Further Vindication (not previously known); (4) A Brief Relation; (5) Reasons for the 
Confirmation, etc. Mr. Whitmore, in Andros Tracts, agrees on numbers (1), (2), (4), 
(5). Number (3) he did not know, and in place of it inserted “‘A Vindication of New 
England,” which, as has been shown, was not by Mather. Some bibliographies have 
ascribed to Mather a tract called “The Revolution in New England Justified,” in 
Andros Tracts, i, 63f., but there seems no good evidence for this. Cf. [did., p. 69 n. 
As to ‘News from New-England,” there seems no good reason to ascribe it to Mather; 


and that he himself did not mention it in describing his writings for New England 
(cf. note 12, ante) argues against his authorship. 


236 INCREASE MATHER 


colonies, but a slightly altered version was issued in the specific 
interest of Massachusetts. In place of the clauses asserting that 
the colonies first became a financial burden after the revocation 
of the charter, and that the latter ensured dependence on Eng- 
land, the Massachusetts argument asserts, first, that no patent 
is asked for except one providing for subordination to England, 
and that no laws are desired repugnant to those of the mother 
country. To this is added a declaration that the colony 1s par- 
ticularly eager to observe the statutes in regard to navigation 
and trade. After a brief reference to the increased cost incurred in 
supporting the colony since it became charterless, there is a 
complacent mention of the fact that Massachusetts “has lately 
reduced the French in Acady unto Obedience to the Crown of 
England.” Similar success in Canada would mean “Millions to 
the English Crown and Nation”; and if the charters be restored, 
Massachusetts is likely to. be encouraged to prosecute her mili- 
tary ambitions (p. 229 n.). 

This tract Mather put into the hands of each member of the 
Privy Council. “His Maxim was, That in all Affairs, a Few did 
All; and his Method was, To find out the most Potent Leaders in 
all Affairs, and make sure of them.” % Among the men he thus 
enlisted was Doctor Tillotson, that “‘man of a clear head, and a 
sweet temper,” “the best preacher of the age.” 97 Anglican as he 
was, he was liberal in his views toward the colony, and to Mather 
“did...sometimes express... his resentments of the injury 
which had been done to the first planters of New England, and his 
great dislike of Archbishop Laud’s spirit towards them.” Even 
in 1695, and in the heart of Puritan New England, Mather found 
it in his heart to write gratefully of Tillotson, to an audience by 
no means inclined to praise English bishops. 

Burnet and Lord Wharton continued as allies, but Mather 
turned his persuasive powers upon a greater personage than 
either. Queen Mary was not to be neglected in any political 
drama of the court. Madam Martha Lockhart, one of the women 
of the bed-chamber, on April 9, 1691, introduced Increase to the 
royal presence, and left him alone with the queen.®® She had 
already heard the colonial cause expounded by Abraham Kick, 
and she found her visitor from the far-away stronghold of Con- 

96. Parentator, p. 125; Andros Tracts, ii, 277. 


97. G. Burnet, History, i, 189; Autobiography. For Tillotson, cf. DNB. 
98. Autobiography; Parentator, pp. 127ff. 


THE NEGOTIATION WITH WILLIAM III 297 


gregationalism no less urgent in his pleas. He was ready, as 
usual, with compliments and assurances of loyalty. She, remark- 
ing that the matter had been long before the Council, declared: 
“T would have that which is ust done for” New England, “‘and 
not only so, but that something of Favour should be shown to 
them.”’ 

In October, Lady Jean Wemyss, Countess of Sutherland, who 
appeared to Mather “‘a very pious and admirably prudent lady,” 
had told him that Queen Mary had promised her good offices for 
the colony.°? The countess was a forceful person, used to plead- 
ing her own cause in official circles, and, no doubt, ready to turn 
such influence as she had to support a friend. Her husband sat in 
William’s Privy Council, her son fought bravely for his king, and 
she herself, there is some reason to believe, went further than 
either in an interest in nonconformity. Perhaps her Scotch blood 
and the tradition of John Knox made her amenable to the type of 
doctrine Mather preached. Certainly she lent him a measure of 
the zeal she used in fighting to maintain her family fortunes, and 
her interest with the queen was great. The ring given her by 
Queen Mary bears witness to the closeness of their relation, and 
her voice must have counted, not only in determining her hus- 
band’s vote at Council meetings, but in swaying the feeling of her 
sovereign. Thus, when Mather took occasion to thank Mary 
for her kind words to the countess, Her Majesty replied: “I have 
had a great character of you, from my Lady Southerland.” *°° | 

One’s imagination delights in the picture which reveals Mather 
and forceful Lady Jean Wemyss working in the same cause, and 
exchanging good opinions of one another. There were no ladies 
quite like the countess in Boston. In the Mather house, or 
even beside Boston-born Lady Phipps, she would have seemed a 
strange guest. Her garb and manners, and the queen’s ring 
sparkling upon her hand, would have provoked interest, to say 
the least, had she appeared with Mrs. Maria Mather and her 
daughters in Boston’s social circles. But in England Mather 
could adapt himself to meet women of the world, and she, know- 
ing how to win a hearing from English lords, gay courtiers, or 

99. Autobiography; W. Fraser, The Sutherland Book, i, 303. Mather spells her 
name “Southerland,” as she herself did ([did., ii, 196, 197; i, 305). T. Hutchinson, 
in the History (London, 1768 ed.), writes Sunderland. (ii, 13) but has Sutherland in the 
edition of Boston, 1767. 


100. Autobiography; Parentator, p.127; Fraser, The Sutherland Book, 1, 281ff., 299, 
306ff., 295 and n., 303. 


Se saan re = 


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5S 


238 INCREASE MATHER 


deviously minded politicians, was no less at home with a pious 
Puritan. 

Mather now begged the queen that the articles approved by the 
small committee, considering the form of the new charter, might 
be approved. This was natural, inasmuch as he had helped to 
frame them. Mary found his request reasonable enough, and 
agreed to use her influence with the king. Mather adroitly intro- 
duced a mention of the tracts denouncing New England, and was, 
no doubt, reassured by her answer: “I have not seen all the 
Pamphlets.” He continued with a reference to Phipps’s Canadian 
venture, declaring that the colonists were “willing again to expose 
themselves in your Majesties Service.” But here she was as well 
informed as he, and asked, “Are they Able to do it? I hear they 
are but in a Bad Condition?” He was able to deprive this of its 
force, by insisting that the uncomfortable state of New England 
resulted largely from the loss of the charter. With this she 
agreed, and then remarked: “‘I doubt, there have been Differences 
There, as well as Here, about Church Government.” 

Mather’s reply is so significant as to deserve quotation. “In 
New-England,” he said, “they are generally those that are Called 
Non-Conformists: But they carry it with all due Respect unto 
others: We Judge some of them to be better Men than ourselves. 
This Nation has cause to Bless God, for the King, and for Your 
Majesty, in regard of that Act of Indulgence, and the Liberty 
of Conscience, which through Your Majesties Favour we now 
enjoy.” Such words do not become a Puritan as intolerant and 
narrow as some would have us believe Mather to have been. Nor 


can they have been uttered simply for their effect, without ex- 


pressing the speaker’s real feeling, for we find them printed 
proudly by his son, and recorded by himself in his autobiography. 
It is hard to see this speech otherwise than as a statement of 
what Mather believed, and was willing to have made known. 

Such views won ready acceptance with Queen Mary. Mather 
left her with her zealous expression of her love for tolerance and 
peace ringing in his ears. 

William came back to London before the end of April, and 
Mather managed to interview him twice before he once more left 
England. On the first occasion the agent offered a petition from 
some London merchants, asking that charter privileges be re- 
stored. This was a measure cleverly adapted to answer some of 


101. Autobiography; Parentator, pp. 130ff. 


THE NEGOTIATION WITH WILLIAM III 239 


the arguments brought against the colonial cause on the ground 
of its threatening of English commerce. 

The next interview with William, on April twenty-eighth, was 
arranged through the good offices of William Cavendish, Earl 
of Devonshire. Mather does not notice it, but there seems to 
have been a certain curtness in the king’s answers on this occa- 
sion. The agent was loud in his protestations of New England’s 
devotion to the king. He pleaded for a settlement which would 
give their “ancient privileges” to the colonists, and that it might 
be speedily provided. He pointed out that New England was 
Congregational and Presbyterian, “so that such a governor will 
not suit with the people... as may be very proper for the other 
English plantations.” The most William would say was that he 
had the Committee’s report, and would see what could be done. 

Mather followed up this interview, by enlisting the services of 
Francis Charlton, “with the wooden leg,’ a man devoted to 
Shaftesbury, and “a hot, indiscreet talker.” He had plotted 
against James II, and had been sentenced for disloyalty. Under 
William the charges were dismissed, and perhaps he was not the 
less welcome to the new sovereign because of his hostility to the 
old. He and Bishop Tillotson both interviewed the king between 
April twenty-eighth and thirtieth, and “did... solicit & pray his 
majesty to be kind to New England.” That a prelate of the 
English church pleaded thus, answered better than anything else 
could the complaint that Massachusetts sought a form of govern- 
ment opposed to all sects but one.?” 

On April thirtieth the Committee asked the king whether he 
would have a royal governor in New England, or allow the people 
to choose their own leader, and make their own laws. William 
asked that the charter provide for a governor appointed by the 
king.*°3 Here, of course, was one of the great points in the whole 


102. Autobiography. Francis Charlton, Luttrell says (i, 274), was one of those 
conspiring against James. In 1685 ([did., p. 355) he was summoned to appear before 
the king. April 27, 168g (Léid., p. 527) he. “outlawed for treason or misdemeanours in 
the late king James’s time, came to the court of kings bench, and haveing writs 
of error allowed ..., they revers’d the same.” (Burnet), 4 Supplement to Burnet’s 
History, ed. H. C. Foxcroft, p. 116, tells of Charlton’s implication in the Rye House 
Plot. Thence are taken the quotations in the text, Jdid., p. 151, says “the discon- 
tent that was over England made some hot men in London, such as . . . Charleton, 
fancy that it might be a fit time now for the duke of Monmouth to raise a rebellion.”’ 

In his Autobiography, Mather calls him “Mr. Charlton.” That Francis Charlton is 
referred to, is shown by Hutchinson, History, ii, 13. 

103. Cal. State Papers, Am. and W.1., xiti, #1431, 1432, 1440. 


240 INCREASE MATHER 


debate. Most of the colonists desired, no doubt, to have no 
officers save those they elected themselves; but William saw too 
well that anything like an imperial policy demanded a royal 
governor in Massachusetts. His opinion, though it must have 
been foreseen, was a disappointment to the agents; but the king 
softened the blow by promising to nominate a governor satisfac- 
tory to the colony. The only stipulation was that a military 
man be chosen, to suit the needs of a time of war." 

Mather seems to have believed that the royal governor was to 
be of limited authority; but immediately after William sailed for 
Holland, the Privy Council issued an order providing that the 
governor should have the veto power in regard to acts and ap- 
pointments passed by the colonial assembly. Mather was out- 
raged, and won from several members of the Council opinions 
that the order did not accord with what the king had designed. 
He sent a copy of his protest to Henry Sidney, Secretary of 
State, “then with the King in Flanders,” asking “That if that 
Order, Signed by one of the Clerks of the Council, was not accord- 
ing to the King’s Mind, His Majesty would graciously please to 
signifie his Dis-approbation thereof.” But there is no reason to 
believe that William meant to grant privileges other than those 
the Council had voted, and he did not answer Mather."s 

The latter, meanwhile, was gratified by the Attorney-General, 
who drew up a charter ‘“‘according to what he took to be the 
King’s Mind, as expressed when his Majesty was last in Council. 
In that Draught, the Free-men (and not all Free-holders) had 
Power to Chuse the Deputy-Governour, and the other General 
Officers; and the King’s Governour had not a Negative Voice 
allowed him in any Case.”’ This proposal was presented to the 
Council on June 8, 1691, and met with the reasonable objec- 
tion, “That by such a Charter... the King’s Governour would 
be made a Governor of Clouts.”’ Orders were given for a new 
charter, which was drawn up, and shown to Mather. He was 
told that, if it did not satisfy him, he should make his objections 
to the Attorney-General. And he found at once that the new 
draft left out certain essential privileges which Massachusetts 
claimed.*® 

It is on the basis of the facts just recited that it has been said 

104. Andros Tracts, 11, 280; Parentator, p. 133. 


105. Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial Series, ii, 127; Andros Tracts, ii, 280. 
106. Ibid., 280, 181; Cal. State Papers, Am. and W, I., xiii, ¥ 1570. 


THE NEGOTIATION WITH WILLIAM III 241 


that Mather particularly opposed the suggestion “relating to the 
suffrage,” and that he had been “‘exerting every means to fasten 
the shackles permanently on the colony by insisting upon the 
old Congregational test for the suffrage.”’ But such statements 
leave out of account the fact that we have in the Privy Council 
Records, and among the State Papers, a definite statement of the 
agents’ objections to the proposed charter, as they made them 
to the Attorney-General. They complained, first, that “Judges, 
Justices of the Peace and Sheriffs” should “be chosen by the 
Generall Assembly, as well as other officers of all sorts, and not 
by the Governor,” as the Lords planned. Their second protest 
was that the Committee’s report provided “that the assistants 
or Council of State be chosen by the General Assembly, with the 
approbation of the Governor.”” Mather would allow the king’s 
representative no power to veto the acts of the Assembly, and 
would not give the king an indefinite time in which to disapprove 
laws. And, far from insisting on the suffrage restriction, the 
agents specifically agreed that the Assembly be chosen by free- 
holders of £40 a year, and by inhabitants with £100 in money.” 

The only other guide we have in this affair is the record that 
the Attorney-General’s proposals denied the governor the veto 
power, and limited the suffrage to freemen, not including all 
“freeholders.” In other words, only those could vote whom 
the government chose to admit to full citizenship, and the mere 
ownership of property did not qualify a man to vote. It is quite 
clear that Mather approved of this arrangement, and opposed 
the charter agreed on by the Council, which left the governor the 
right to negative acts and appointments and extended the suf- 
frage to all freeholders. Therefore, we are safe in saying that 
he believed the voters should elect officers who might legislate 
and appoint to certain positions without being subject to the 
veto of an appointee of the king, and that he wished to limit the 
franchise to such men as the government saw fit to regard as 
qualified citizens. But, if this was his feeling, the fact remains 
that he did not press his objections, except in regard to the veto. 
He said not a word to the Attorney-General as to restricting the 
right to vote to “freemen.” We know that he protested against 
endowing a royal governor with authority to reject popular acts 

107. J. T. Adams, The Founding, pp. 435, 445, 446, and references given there; Acts 


of the Privy Council, ii, 126, 127; Cal, State Papers, Am. and W. I., xiii, %1669, 1606, 
1631. 


242 INCREASE MATHER 


that he disapproved, but we have no evidence that he uttered one 
word in favor of limiting the franchise. Nor can we imagine that 
he did, for the colony had voted, after the Andros revolt, to reduce 
the requirements for citizenship, basing them on non-religious 

rounds.’®® They had thus voluntarily surrendered what we are 
asked to believe that their accredited agent fought for as one 
of their dearest rights! And Mather not only made no specific 
plea for the religious test for voters, but never mentioned it in any 
one of the many arguments he offered during his agency. Indeed, 
he had on at least one occasion specifically petitioned for a gov- 
ernment based on the votes of all freeholders. He sought the old 
charter, but he knew how often the colony had been warned that 
England would not tolerate the old suffrage restriction. He knew 
that the colonists had given up their old stand on the matter. 
With abundant evidence at hand, it would still be difficult to 
believe that he insisted on-the colony’s right to govern in a way 
specifically disapproved of in England, and by a method now no 
longer desired by his own people. No doubt he believed, per- 
sonally, that the colonial government might well ask to be 
allowed to determine the amount of capital necessary to confer 
a vote upon its owner, or to fix the time of residence required for 
citizenship. If he did so believe, then he favored, so far as his 
own views were concerned, the limitation of the suffrage to 
“freemen’”’; but to say this, is not to declare that he thirsted for 
a state where all but those of his own faith were disenfranchised. 
Only speculation can determine what thoughts he had, in his 
private capacity. All we know is that he never spoke in favor 
of limiting the right to vote by means of any religious criterion, 
except in so far as this may have been included in the rights 
conferred by the old colonial charter, and that, when a new 
patent was under discussion, he objected to none of its provisions 
in regard to the suffrage. The records do not make him appear 
as the zealous servant of the old theocratic limitation of citizen- 
ship.7° 

108. Palfrey, iv, 26. 

109. It should be remembered that to change the requirement for the suffrage from 
“freemen” to “freeholders” might disenfranchise men admitted to citizenship, but not 
property holders. No religious bias was needed to cause objection to this plan on the 
part of a representative of the colonists. So on July 17 we find it agreed that the agents 
may name certain freemen, not more than one hundred in number, who, though not 


freeholders, may vote. (Cal. State Papers, Am. and W.1., xiii, ® 1650.) We have here 
a clue to any objection Mather may be believed to have made to the change from 


THE NEGOTIATION WITH WILLIAM III 243 


He did speak out as to the royal governor’s being granted the 
right of veto, and his objections were strenuous. He went to 
Sir Henry Ashurst, and together they sought out the Attorney- 
General. To him, as we have seen, they protested against the 
authority given the governor. 

At this time, Mather made one more of those slips to which 
his hot temper sometimes led him. As his anger had run away 
with him when he denounced Randolph, so, in declaring that he 
would rather die than accept the new charter, he said much more 
than he meant. Or, as he puts it, “I expressed my Dissatisfac- 


OE arse 


tion, perhaps, with a greater Pathos than I should have done” —a _ 
remark that deserves to be quoted when one charges him with 
imprudence. Imprudent he certainly was; for to vow to refuse 
the charter, and then to accept it, weakened his position when it 


became necessary for him to uphold the new form of government 
as one deserving popular support. Moreover, his lapse from dip- 
lomatic speech brought prompt retaliation. He was told that 
his consent to the charter was neither expected nor desired, that 
he was not a plenipotentiary for a foreign state, and that, if the 
proposed document was refused, Massachusetts must “take what 
would follow,” since ‘‘his Majesty was resolved to settle the 
Pountreye i 

The objections of Mather and Ashurst were given by the 
Attorney-General to the Privy Council, and sent also to the king. 
Some of Mather’s friends wrote to the courtiers abroad with 
William, ‘“‘entreating them to use their Interest with his Majesty 
that nothing might be Imposed on New-England, which would be 
grievous to his good Subjects there.”” Mather was sure that, if 
the king were in England, more influence might be brought to 
bear, and he prevailed on someone who was close to the queen, 
probably the Countess of Sutherland, to write her, urging that 
William be asked to delay all action until he returned to London. 
This Queen Mary did.™ 

Confident in her success, Mather, who had “By continual 
Attendance on this arduous Affair” lost sleep and “neglected”’ 
his ‘“Necessary Food” until his “Health was greatly impaired,” 


“freemen” to “‘freeholders.”” His objection would seem to be the act of a man not 
willing to see former citizens disenfranchised, not that of a zealot, eager to restrict the 
suffrage to his own sect. 

110. Andros Tracts, ii, 281. 

111. Acts of the Privy Council, ii, 127; Cal, State Papers, Am. and W. I., xiii, % 1670, 
1675; Andros Tracts, ii, 282. 


244 INCREASE MATHER 


felt safe in retiring to rest in the country. He chose to go to 
Totteridge, eleven miles out of London, where his friend Richard 
Baxter had once lived, and where Mr. Charlton had an estate.™ 

William did not listen to his queen or to such courtiers as spoke 
for Mather. Wisely, he decided that New England must be 
settled at once, and that delay could serve no good end. The 
news of his determination to act at once surprised Mather, who 
hurried back to London, where he was shown the royal letter 
which disposed of his objections to the charter.” 

There was nothing more for the agents to do, except to make 
the new form of government as satisfactory as might be. With 
Ashurst, Mather petitioned that no property of the colony or its 
citizens might be taken away, nor any privileges “which they 
have a Right unto.” They asked that Maine be granted to 
Massachusetts, together with Nova Scotia.™ All this was agreed 
to, although New Hampshire, which they also asked for, was 
denied.s Plymouth had desired a separate charter, but in view 
of the obvious disadvantages of having two colonies in a district 
most easily administered as a unit, such wishes had little chance 
of fulfilment. On the other hand, suggestions were made that 
Plymouth be joined to New York. Governor Hinckley wrote 
Mather, saying that if no separate charter could be secured, 
Plymouth men would choose union with Massachusetts. This, 
too, Mather arranged. True, he was harshly criticized by Ichabod 
Wiswall, agent of Plymouth, who stood on a platform of a sepa- 
rate charter or none, and, like Cooke, Mather’s colleague, would 
accept no compromise. It is hard to see how Mather could have 
done better for Hinckley’s people. Plymouth was obviously not 
likely to remain independent for long, and her citizens preferred 
Massachusetts to New York. One need hardly go behind their 
thanks to Mather for his action in regard to them.”° 

Mather begged for and won a chance to see the charter, as 
finally agreed upon. He succeeded in having inserted a clause 
preventing difficulty in future from the Puritans’ repugnance to 
take oaths on the Bible. More important, an article was added 
“confirming Grants made by the General Court, notwithstanding 

112. Andros Tracts, ii, 282, 283; MHS Proc., xxviii, 348; Nonconformist’s Memorial, 
iii, 397; G. Burnet, Supplement, p. 116 n. 

113. Andros Tracts, li, 283, 320. 

114. Ibid., 283, 284; Cal. State Papers, Am. and W. I., xiii, %1731, 1738. 

116. [bid., 1731, 1738, 1745; Andros Tracts, 11, 283. 

116. See Appendix. 


THE NEGOTIATION WITH WILLIAM III 245 


any defect that might attend the Form of Conveyance, that so 
Mens Titles to their Lands might not be invalidated, only for 
that the Laws which gave them their Right, had not passed 
under the Publick Seal in the time of the former Government.” 
The colonists were thus insured against further attacks on their 
property, such as those which did so much to discredit Andros’s 
régime. Other changes were asked for, but the agents could not 


persuade the Council to grant them. Their case was settled.” | 


They had done their best. There remained only the question as 
to how they should receive such benefits as England would con- 
sent to give. 


117. Andros Tracts, ii, 284; Cal. State Papers, dm. and W. I., xiii, ¥ 1731, 1758, 
1759+ 


x) A CARERS 


CHAPTER XV 
THE NEW CHARTER 


HOULD the representatives of Massachusetts accept the new 
charter? Mather sought advice. It was pointed out to him 
that to refuse might bring a worse settlement for New England. 
To accept was not to sacrifice the old privileges, since judgment 
had been entered years ago against the original charter. The 
colonists under the new form of government would be by no 
means precluded from asking for more liberty, should a favorable 
time for such requests appear. A lawyer gave it as his opinion 
that the new charter was more advantageous than the old. More- 
over, the king’s power to settle the matter as he saw fit was un- 
disputed. The agents might accept or not, but the royal will 
was sure to be carried out." 

Most interesting of all, we have Mather’s own statement that 
he was told, and realized, that the old charter itself would not 
make it possible for New England to be governed as of yore. 
To attempt to repeat the acts of the past would be to make cer- 
tain a new guo warranto.2, Mather’s acceptance of this doctrine 
is one more shred of evidence, if any be needed, that he cannot 
have supposed that in soliciting for the “ancient rights” of the 
colony he was working toward the reéstablishment of the religious 
test for the franchise, nor can he have hoped to restore it by any 
means whatsoever. He was too well informed as to what England 
would and would not allow in her colonies. 

We need not stop for all the arguments he retails as those by 
which good advisers urged him to accept the proposed settle- 
ment.? Obviously they were wise. Massachusetts could hope for 
little if her agents rejected a document prepared with, at least, 
partial deference to their wishes. To stand out for the old order 

1. Andros Tracts, ii, 285-287. 

2. Ibid.,p.287. See also, a letter of Charles Lidget to Francis Foxcroft, November 5, 
1690: “Cook & Oakes run hard for the old Charter Mather & Ashurst for a new, find- 
ing by the former no power for the very necessarys of government, and openly own that 
no man of Estate or brain will subject himselfe to y® injurys and perrils of giving judg- 
ment of any sort by that authority.” Mew England Historical and Genealogical Register, 
XXXil1, 407. 

3. Andros Tracts, ii, 285-292. 


THE NEW CHARTER 247 


or none might be an effective gesture for a man wedded to the 
old ideas of theocratic government, but it could never be a prac- 
tical measure. So long as there was a king and government in 
England, the colonies’ destiny was to be shaped by them. Dip- 
lomats might hope to win changes and concessions, but not vio- 
lations of what English statesmen saw as the fundamentals of 
colonial policy. 

But, though his course might seem wise in London, if he signed 
the charter, how would the colonists greet Mather when he 
brought home to them a royal governor, and the loss of some of 
their former privileges? Inevitably there would be criticism. 
Elisha Cooke’s sympathizers, the narrowest school, would take 
their chances under any government the king might choose, 
rather than accept voluntarily anything short of the rights they 
believed to have been granted to their fathers. So also, ardent 
Congregationalists might well blame the man who had gone to 
England as the emissary of the churches, should he return with 
no guarantee for the continued dominance of their religious 
establishment. The ordinary man in the street, however, would 
be glad to be sure that his property was in his own hands, and 
that he might once more vote for some, at least, of the officers 
who governed him. 

The easiest course, undoubtedly, and the only one which 
agrees with the character sometimes bestowed on Mather, would 
be to refuse to sign the charter. If it were put in force in spite 
of his refusal, he might shrug his shoulders and declare that he 
had done his best. He might then pose before the strictest church 
party as a man who stood inflexibly for the old order or none, 
and criticism could not reach him, unless it were directed against 
his too rigid adherence to things overthrown by the progress of 
the colony and its ideas. So Elisha Cooke chose to refuse the new 
charter,* evading thus all responsibility for its effect upon New 
England, but, at the same time, writing himself down as a man 
unable to see the trend of the times and the inevitable conse- 
quences of England’s imperial desires. If he was a defender of . 
American. independence, hé insisted on independence at a time — 
when it could not succeed. By his attitude he deprived himself 
of any chance to help in moulding the future course of Anglo- 
colonial relations. As an opponent of the only terms the king 


4. Palfrey, iv, 82. Hutchinson (History, i, 408) says that Oakes signed, though he 
opposed the charter. 


248 INCREASE MATHER 


would grant, he was removed from the sphere of those nego- 
tiators who could compromise when compromise was necessary, 
and thereby save for themselves a chance to be of influence with 
English statesmen in stating the colony’s case and gaining con- 
cessions on such points as were not already settled by the nature 
of England’s policy.’ 

Mather and Ashurst wisely accepted the proposed charter. In 
Mather’s action lies the real success of his agency. He had 
courage to face criticism at home, knowing that he brought to his 
people, not the old independence, but a plan which allowed them 
a large measure of popular government, guaranteed their prop- 
erty rights, and gave them, in place of a chaos in which they were 
open to any tyrannical imposition, an established code ensuring 
them certain privileges under English rule. Moreover, he could 
well be proud to have it known that two of the most essential 
clauses in the charter were due to his foresight, and written 
at his dictation. True, he gave up power for his church by accept- 
ing the abandonment of the old religious restriction upon voters, 
and by agreeing to articles providing for tolerance for all sects. 
But the colony had made plain its own willingness to give up the 
‘religious test for full citizenship, and Mather’s consent to this, 
and to the inauguration of “liberty of conscience”’ for all, is a 
tribute to his enlightenment. We have seen that he never urged 
anything but tolerance, while he was in England, and never in- 
sisted on any measure designed to give political power to his 
church. He saw that Congregationalism could survive only by 
suiting its policy to the times. He knew that its leaders could 
strengthen themselves best by appearing to the English authori- 
ties as men with whom it was possible to deal without being 
repelled by an outworn strictness of devotion to every jot and 
tittle of the old order. 

Accordingly he chose to sign the charter. If he had had his 
own way, and a community shaped by his own wishes, he might 
have tried to impose universal control by one church, intolerant 
of all others; but, actually, he was dealing with human beings 
who had interests outside as well as within the meeting-house, 
and he turned his course with them in mind. That he did not 
guess wrongly, from a practical point of view, is shown in that 
the nomination of the new officers to be appointed for New Eng- 


_5. That Mather had in view a possible resumption of the fight for the “ancient 
privileges” is shown by Andros Tracts, ii, 285. 


THE NEW CHARTER 249 


land by the king was left virtually in his hands.° If he had sac- 
rificed part of the old system by which Congregationalism had 
tried to rule, he gave up only what had to go, and, by so doing, 
made possible a new close alliance, of a different sort, between 
church leaders and governmental officers. Obviously, if he could 
choose the new governor and his colleagues, he could make sure 
that they were not men hostile to his church. Cooke and Oakes 
could find no such ready means to serve their ends. Their oppost- 
tion to the new charter made it unlikely that they would be called 
to decide who should carry out its provisions. Mather, on the 
other hand, had put himself on record as accepting a form of 
government far better than any Massachusetts had owned since 
the Quo Warranto. He won, thereby, the chance to safeguard 
what he believed to be the will of Massachusetts, by suggesting 
men to govern it who were likely to meet the desires of those he 
represented. 

Cooke seems to have wished to base his failure to accept the 
charter on grounds of expediency, declaring that he believed 
action should be delayed until the king returned to England. In 
this he acted with less knowledge of the true situation than 
Mather or Ashurst, who knew how the failure to push the charges 
against Andros must have impressed William, and realized how 
much pressure was being brought to hasten a settlement for the 
colony. Moreover, Mather had seen the king’s approval of the 
charter and his explicit refusal of the agents’ objections.” The 
finality in this royal letter was more apparent, probably, to 
Mather, who knew the true state of affairs, than to Cooke and 
Oakes, new to the English court, and without any close personal 
supporters there. 

And so, on September 17, the Privy Council ordered the Sec- 
retary to “prepare a warrant for his Majesty’s royal signature, 


for passing said charter under the great seal of England.” Two, 


/ weeks earlier Mather had been asked to nominate the new rulers 
for the colony. He had presented a list, his suggestions were 


all adopted, and on the 7th of October, the new charter was in 
force, and Sir William Phipps was governor in New England.* 


William Stoughton was chosen lieutenant-governor. Isaac 


6. Palfrey, iv, 85; Hutchinson, History, i, 413; Cal. State Papers, Am, and W.1., 
xili, # 1772. 

5. Andros Tracts, ii, 315-317 (especially 316), 320. 

8. Cal. State Papers, Am. and W.1., xii, % 1769, 1806. 


Sas 


250 INCREASE MATHER 


Addington, secretary under the provisional government, was 
continued in that office. As councillors, Simon Bradstreet, John 
Richards, Nathaniel Saltonstall, Wait Winthrop, John Phillips, 
James Russell, Samuel Sewall, Samuel Appleton, Bartholomew 
Gedney, John Hawthorn (Hathorne), Elisha Hutchinson, Robert 
Pike, Jonathan Curwin (Corwin), John Jolliffe, Adam Winthrop, 
Richard Middlecock (Middlecott), John Foster, Peter Serjeant, 
Joseph Lynd, Samuel Heyman, and Stephen Mason appeared as 
Mather’s choices from Massachusetts. For Plymouth, he nomi- 
nated Thomas Hinckley, William Bradford, John Walley, Barna- 
bas Lothrop; and for Maine, Job Alcott, Samuel Daniel, and 
Silvanus Davis.? 

We have already seen something of the new governor. Sir 
William Phipps was, undoubtedly, an admirer and follower of 
Increase Mather, and a good Congregationalist. He was, there- 
fore, well adapted to favor Mather politically, and likely to try 
to defend the Congregational church against any loss of influence. 
Undoubtedly Mather remembered this in nominating Phipps, 
but he had other claims to advancement. The French were 
menacing, and colonial expeditions against them were constantly 
discussed. William felt that a military man should govern New 
England.*? Now, great man or small, wise or foolish, Phipps 
excelled all New Englanders in military experience. However 
incapable a general he may have been, there was no one else to 
whom a large force could be trusted, unless a relatively untried 
leader were chosen, or unless an English soldier, with no interest 
in the colony except in so far as it could furnish troops, became 
governor in Boston. The last alternative would have pleased few 
in New England, and to select for a leader in time of war some 
good citizen whose prowess had been proved only on the drill- 
sround, would be too great a risk. It would be foolish to suggest 
that Phipps did not recommend himself to Mather as an ally of 
his church and a personal friend, but it is quite as idle to dispose 
of his appointment as nothing more than an ardent divine’s 
choice of a pliant disciple. Phipps had served Massachusetts in 
time of need. He had won a military success, and had led one 
army to defeat. He had served faithfully, however mistakenly, 
and had been generous when the colonists were in straits. Sewall 
was not the only New Englander who knew that Phipps still 
commanded a share of their allegiance. Mather was lucky in that 


g. Cal. State Papers, Am. and W. I., xiii, % 1806, 1772. 
10. Cf. note 104, chap. xiv, ante. 


THE NEW CHARTER 251 


he could choose a follower of his own, who was also a man who had 
friends in the colony and had proved his willingness to serve it. 

As for Stoughton, he had been agent from the colony to Eng- 
land in defence of the old charter. He knew something of nego- 
tiations in England, and one remembers that he urged upon the 
colony obedience to the Navigation Act. He was a close friend 
of Dudley, and had been a member of Andros’s council, and a 
judge under him. On the other hand, he had aided in the revolt 
against Sir Edmund. He was a Puritan, and, at times, was 
marked by a stern narrowness of thought by no means to his 
credit. But he had been, for many years, a leader in Massa- 
chusetts public life, and if a governor who favored the Angli- 
can Church had given him high place, one need not lay Mather’s 
nomination of him solely to religious bias. He was not only a 
good Congregationalist, but a strong politician.” 

Addington had been an Assistant under the old charter, and, 
since the revolution in Boston, had been secretary of the colony.* 
The freemen of Massachusetts obviously considered him worthy. 
Mather merely continued in office a man already approved by 
the voters. 

Of the twenty-eight Assistants that Mather appointed, twenty- 
one were Massachusetts men, and of these all but five had held 
officein the provisional government elected to succeed Andros. All 
four of the Plymouth representatives had been elected to office 
before Mather chose them. Obviously, then, his selections, if 
conditioned by personal motives, were strangely consonant with 
the popular taste. Moreover, if it be urged that popular elec- 
tions, prior to the enforcement of the new charter, meant little, 
since none but church members voted,: the fact remains that, 
after the restriction of the suffrage was removed by the new form 
of government Mather brought back to Boston, twenty-eight 
of the officials he had chosen were voted upon by the people, 
and fifteen were reélected.4 Therefore, if the statement that 
Mather “‘succeeded in having the more important offices filled 
with the most fanatical, or the most subservient, of the men in 


head 


11. J. A. Doyle, The Puritan Colonies, ii, 379; Channing, 11, 286. 

12. Palfrey, passim; J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, 1, 194-208. 

13. Palfrey, passim. 

14. See the lists in Palfrey, iv, 599, 600. The five who had not been in the govern- 
ment before were Jolliffe, Lynd, Heyman, Middlecott, and Mason, the last being a Lon- 
don merchant. The election of councillors was by the people, through their representa- 
tives chosen to the General Assembly. 


Boe INCREASE MATHER 


the colony’s public life” ** be true, it must be admitted that the 
voters of Massachusetts, even after the religious test for the 
franchise had been weakened, had chosen just such “fanatical” 
and “‘subservient”’ men. And, after the suffrage was extended 
to all freeholders, they proceeded to choose the majority of this 
weak and bigoted group! Mather’s governor was not subject 
to popular election, and there is no telling how he might have 
fared at the polls, but more than half of the Assistants kept their 
laces. 

: One cannot show, then, that Mather nominated officers for 
New England purely on personal grounds. Of course, all his can- 
didates were Puritans, and nearly all of them had been chosen 
by the voters in the reéstablished colonial government which 
followed the fall of Andros. Where were more representative 
men to be found, unless one went to those who had been allies of 
Randolph or of Sir Edmund, both rejected by the colony, or un- 
less one sought some individual wholly inexperienced in public 
life? It was no time to crowd the Town-house with political 
novices, for the problem of the moment was no less than that of 
guiding New England through the difficult days which attended 
the beginning of a new political system. 

A few leaders, in favor with the voters, were not chosen to 
office by Mather. Danforth had to give up his place to Stough- 
ton, and John Smith, Peter Tilton, William Browne, William 
Johnson, Thomas Oakes, and Elisha Cooke, all lost their seats as 
Assistants. All but one of them were of Cooke’s party, believing 
in the old charter at all costs.*° Cooke and Oakes had opposed 
Mather’s course during the agency. He could hope for nothing 
but criticism from them and their friends. But, leaving his per- 
sonal feelings out of account, how could the colony, which must 
go on, willy-nilly, under the new charter, hope for constructive 
leadership from men who had fought the whole plan by which her 
destiny must be worked out? It is startling to find Mather 
painted as the advocate of the old charter, of the theocratic 
régime, and of intolerance, and then accused of nominating 
officers from “‘the clerical party” *7 to serve his own interests, 


15. J. T. Adams, The Founding, p. 451. But Hutchinson (History, i, 414) says that 
the men Mather chose ‘“‘were persons of the best characters in the several parts of the 
colonies.” 

16. Palfrey, iv, 86; Hutchinson, History, i, 414; and lists in Palfrey, iv, 599, 600. 

17. J. T. Adams, The Founding, p. 451. 


THE NEW CHARTER oe 


when the men whom he chose had been previously elected by 
the voters, and the only ones whom he displaced were them- 
selves the champions of the strict old ways, and champions in 
opposition to him! 

It would be idle to say that Mather made no mistakes in his 
nominations. His “‘slate’”’ could not have been ideal, unless he 
were gifted with some uncanny power of reading the public mind 
a year in advance. With such a marvellous faculty, a scholar 
and divine, sure of peace and solitude, with no idea of carrying 
his teaching among men or making it of use in the world, could 
' afford to fill the government with appointees chosen solely for 
their merit. But a practical man, intensely absorbed in religious 
matters, and, even more, in the carrying of light to the hearts and 
minds of men, the teacher of a church in the greatest town in 
New England, largely dependent on personal prestige for the 
satisfactory carrying on of his task, could not so easily shut his 
eyes to worldly truths. Such a one must do as Mather did, and 
select candidates, with an eye not only to their experience and 
past political successes, but also to their friendliness to him and 
his work. But, even had he wished, he could not have chosen 
solely with reference to himself. Those he nominated must be 
capable of winning the voters’ favor, or their defeat would bring 
discredit to their sponsor. To elect weak and unpopular men in 
the hope that they, right or wrong, would carry him to success, 
would have been to err in a way foreign to Mather. He knew that 
most of the officers he chose could continue only if they were re- 
elected by the people, he knew that the charter would win friends 
only in so far as the first rulers under it were successful, and he 
knew that his own prestige could not survive in the face of gen- 
eral hostility to the men and the form of government he had 
accepted for the colony. Had he foreseen how gravely he was to | 
suffer from Phipps’s faults, he might have chosen a different | 
governor; but in 1692 Sir William had not revealed to Mather or | 
to the colonists the weakness which later lost him the support | 
of his subjects. | 

With the signing of the charter Mather’s mission in England 
ended. His vanity was tickled by interviews with the king, and 
he was diplomat enough to wish to leave a favorable impression 
in William’s mind. So, on the 23d of October, soon after the 
king’s return to London, the Earl of Nottingham ushered Mather 
into the royal presence, in order that the agent might welcome 


254 INCREASE MATHER 


his sovereign to England.*® Again, on November 4, accompanied 
by the Earls of Nottingham, Devonshire, and Portland, he saw 
William, and thanked him for the charter." At the same time, 
he hinted that the colonists’ good behavior under the new gov- 
ernment might warrant further favors in future. 

Finally, on January 3, 1692, Mather and Phipps went to- 
gether to Whitehall. They bade the king farewell, and Mather 
improved this last opportunity by asking and obtaining a promise 
of royal graciousness toward Harvard.” 

Mather had found many friends in England, and more than 
once had longed to remain there. He lingered for two months 
more, among the bookshops and parish churches he had come to 
love, and with the Puritans, Anglicans, lords and ladies, from 
whom he had won a welcome. On March 7 he left town with 
Phipps and went to Southampton. Thence, in Sir William’s 
yacht, they sailed to the Isle of Wight, and, a week later, to 
Dartmouth and Plymouth. On March 29 they finally put to 
sea, and headed toward Boston.” 

With them they brought, as we have seen, a new form of 
government and new officers for it. The exact nature of the 
charter has been explained more than once, and its full text 1s 
accessible to-day.” We need only remind ourselves of its main 
features. It applied to a district including Massachusetts, 
Plymouth, Maine, and Nova Scotia, with a coast line almost un- 
broken from Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket to the mouth of 
the St. Lawrence. Inland the territory stretched to the Pacific 
coast. The old right of the people to elect their own executive 
officers was gone. The royal governor might reject laws passed 
by the popular assembly, or the king might veto them within 
three years of their enactment. The governor commanded the 
militia, and was authorized to appoint its officers, as well as the 
judges for the colonial courts. Admiralty affairs, the post-office, 
and the custom house, were all controlled from England. All 
this gave scope for a king to “oppress” the colonists if he chose 


18. Autobiography; Parentator, pp. 144 ff. 19. [bid. 

20. Autobiography; Parentator, p. 154. 

21. Autobiography; Parentator, p. 155. 

22. For discussions of the new charter, see, for example, Palfrey, iv, 75-83; J. T. 
Adams, The Founding, pp. 446-451; J. A. Doyle, The Puritan Colonies, ii, 374ff.; E. B. 
Greene, Provincial America, pp. 21, 22. The charter is printed in Acts and Resolves, 
Public and Private, of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, i, 1-20, and in Colonial Society 
Publications, 11, 7ff. 


THE NEW CHARTER 255 


to do so, but the surest defence was the maintenance of close 
diplomatic ties with his court. For this Mather had done much 
to pave the way. 

If the new charter fell short of the old in the amount of inde- 
pendent government it allowed, it contained, none the less, some 
distinct advantages. The General Court, elected by the people’ 
and their representatives, had the sole power to tax. The gover4 
nor could use no funds except with the consent of the delegates 
of the people.” Moreover, there were now legalized some thifgs 
not expressly permitted before. The right to tax non-freemen, to 
govern by representatives, to inflict capital punishment, to set 
up courts, and to probate wills, were all confirmed to the colony. 
And, most immediately welcome, all titles to lands granted under 
the old government were recognized. However he felt on the 
broader questions of politics, the Massachusetts citizen was sure 
to feel relief in knowing that his farm, or his house in the North 
End of Boston, was guaranteed to him and his heirs. Probably 
his title had never really been in danger, but he certainly believed 
that it had, and the relief that came from reassurance on this 
point he clearly owed to Mather. How many of the other privi- 
leges now conferred were due to the same man, one may judge 
from the record of his work. Whether England would have been 
as liberal, had not her ministers been confronted by so able a 
defender of the colonies, is a question that cannot be answered; 
but we have seen that Mather spoke, wrote, and planned con- 
sistently to gain the very things seen to-day as the best elements 
of the new political scheme. 

The agency is the climax of one side of his career. Here his 


talent for organization, for politics, and for clear argument in 


matters of statecraft, was used to the full. Here his personal 
qualities were most drastically tested by the need of winning 
sympathy and concessions from a court where many conflicting 
interests, and many personal ambitions, played a part. The years 
from 1688 to 1692 display the full vigor of some of the dominant 
qualities that marked, to a lesser degree, Mather’s achievement 
at home. 

For the most part, historians have seen in his agency the work 
of a man of ability and strength.?? On the other hand, some 

23. Cf. J. A. Doyle, The Puritan Colonies, ii, 330-332; Palfrey, vols. iii and iv, 


passim; and R. H. Murray, Dublin University and the New World, pp. 39, 40. C. M. 
Andrews (The Fathers of New England, pp. 196, 197) says: “‘Mather’s success was note- 


¥ 


256 INCREASE MATHER 


writers profess to see in it a partial failure for him. For us, then, 
some assessment of his accomplishment in England 1s needed, as 
a clue to his character and position as a man among men in a 
world of secular concerns. 

His agency, of course, resulted in the new charter, and his 
acceptance of it committed him to it, so that it is possible to 
judge him, in part, by its merits or faults. It deprived New 
England of a measure of independence, and it withdrew from the 
Congregational Church some of its former aids to power. There- 
fore, if we believe that the colonists wished, and had a right 
to claim, virtual independence in 1692, Mather’s mission was, 
indeed, a partial failure. Or, if we think that the undisputed 
supremacy of his church was vital to colonial interests, he served 
his country ill. But, however patriotic we may be as regards 
American independence or American Congregationalism, we 
must still admit that of the old privileges Mather yielded, most 
had never been sanctioned by English law. His failure to win 
them was but failure to secure “rights” unrecognized except by 
popular feeling, and without basis even in the old charter. They 
could not exist under any colonial policy then acknowledged by 
England, and to ask Mather to secure them would have been to 
ask him, single-handed, to accomplish, in four years, what it 
took a century and the labors of many men to achieve. 

Admitting, then, that he failed to accomplish what some 
might have liked to see, one is still forced to remember that 
_ it is hard to imagine any American diplomat succeeding where 
he had failed. He was, of course, ignorant of law, but there was 
no New Englander at the time who was not, and his course was 
-marked, as we have seen, by frequent conferences with English 
lawyers, and with Ashurst, who must have known something 
of the legal side. There is no evidence that he ever rejected the 
advice given him by such counsellors; and it is interesting to dis- 
cover that, divine as he was, his advisers during his agency were 
not primarily his fellow clergymen, and his guide was not the 
letter of the Bible but such political wisdom as he had time to 
acquire in London. And we have concrete results from his work, 
in a government called better than that of the old charter.’ 


worthy”’; and he cites some of the benefits he obtained for New England. Most interest 

ing, perhaps, is Mr. Quincy’s praise of Mather, doubly valuable as coming from a his- 

torian who, elsewhere, sees little in him to commend. See Quincy, History, i, 78, 122, 123. 
24. J. T. Adams, The Founding, p. 446. 


THE NEW CHARTER 267 


Certainly the new plan established a definite basis for colonial 
administration, and authorized some privileges that Massa- 
chusetts had hitherto claimed without authority. It confirmed 
the people’s possession of some of their dearest prerogatives. The 
unpopular rule of Andros was replaced by a more liberal govern- 
ment, and a more or less chaotic provisional régime gave way to 
a body of law under which the state could proceed in full con- 
fidence as to her legal status. General tolerance in religion was 
expressly commanded, and by modern standards this was a great 
advance. To this, one remembers, Mather committed himself, 
by accepting it without protest, and, more than once, his specific 
requests in England were for changes in line with liberal develop- 
ment. He did fail to secure New Hampshire for Massachusetts, 
but he was defeated by a “‘not very reputable intrigue.” > On 
the other hand, he did add Plymouth to his own state. If in this 
he failed to satisfy the dearest wishes of Plymouth men, he saved 
them from an alternative they dreaded, and gained the utmost 
England would grant. In Connecticut, the case was simpler, and 
thence, as from Plymouth and Massachusetts, Mather won the 
official thanks of the representatives.” He got from Treby and 
Somers, with whom he had so many other dealings, a legal opin- 
ion asserting that the old Connecticut charter was still in force. 
No more was necessary to make him seem to the people of that 
colony a ready aid in time of need.?? 

So Mather served three colonies, gave to one of them all she 
asked, to another more than she would otherwise have had, and 
bestowed upon his own state a new government far better than. 
any she had known for years.*He accepted without protest an’ | 
extension of the suffrage and the legal establishment of religious 
tolerance. In return, he gave up only part of the virtual inde- | 
pendence which the colony had claimed rather by custom than 
by right. | 

From our point of view, of course, quite as important as what 
he won, are the means by which he wonit. On the side of char- 


26. J.T. Adams, The Founding, p. 449; J. A. Doyle, The Puritan Colonies, ii, 379-381; 
J. Belknap, History, 1, 239 (chap. 9); MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 37, letter of Moodey to 
Mather, Jan. 8, 16809, first paragraph of postscript. 

26. Cf. Palfrey, iv, 89, go. 

27. B. Trumbull, 4 Complete History of Connecticut, i, 386, 387, and H. C. Lodge, 
Short History of the English Colonies, p. 380; also letter of Secretary Allyn of Connec- 
ticut to Mather, June 2, 1692, in New England Historical and Genealogical Register, 
XXill, 341; and, on Connecticut’s vote of thanks, Jid., 464. 


258 INCREASE MATHER 


acter and ability, no period of his life tells us so much. Going to 
England, a Puritan, a minister, and a colonist, unknown except 
to readers of current theology or New England history, he used 
the weapons he found so well that he nearly won from James II, 
no lover of popular liberty, the charter he sought for Massachu- 
setts. He was defeated by no defect in his argument, but by a 
chance rumor that seemed to James to strengthen his hold on 
the throne. From this reverse, Mather continued his work with 
what must be seen as a talent for political warfare. Puritan 
preachers were enlisted in his service, and he impressed his views 
on the lords, judges, and politicians whose support was neces- 
sary for his success. Read the names of those whom he won over, 
and remember that the list represents only a part of those with 
whom he made his personality count. With such support he 
once more neared his goal, only to have restoration of the charter 
prevented by a conflict on-a question of local English politics. 


. But, finally, he won the inclusion in the new charter of the more 


ee 


essential terms he had sought. He left England with many friends 
in all classes, and there can have been few interested in the con- 
duct of colonial affairs to whom the name of Mather did not have 
meaning, and few to whom his tall, soberly garbed figure was 
unfamiliar. 

We look upon Benjamin Franklin’s work as a diplomat as an 
achievement in statecraft. So it was; but it is interesting to 
speculate as to how much he was helped by Mather’s mission, 
generations earlier. As one reads history, it is hard to escape the 
belief that Increase Mather was a pioneer in American diplo- 
macy. His predecessors as colonial agents had neither the oppor- 
tunity nor the daring to serve as he did. Whether he succeeded or 
failed, whether he was able or clumsy, he did more than any 
emissary from Massachusetts to England had done before. He 
made it clear to one group of English statesmen, at least, that 
the colonists had well-defined aims and men to speak for them. 
After his time, one finds more and more diplomatic intercourse 
between colonies and mother country; and it is quite clear that 
he himself believed that the friends he had made, and particularly 
the impression he had been able to give the king and queen, were 
guarantees of further progress in winning for the colonies a fair 
hearing and more favors from England. From this point of view 
his agency has deep meaning for subsequent history, and testi- 
fies plainly to the soundness of his political judgment. 


adn a 


THE NEW CHARTER 259 


The sort of ability that made his agency successful, whether 
revealed by Puritan or Papist, “ancient” or “‘modern,” shows 
always a strong man. So also, his courage in accepting the charter 
is of the sort that has its place in the estimation of all ages and 
spheres of human life. He did not choose the easy course, which 
was to resign in the face of odds, but chose to link his fortunes with 
the success or failure of a new charter, because he believed it was 
likely to serve his country well. To face certain opposition, and 
to confide his own prestige to the chances of an administration 
which seemed the best that could be hoped for, was the act of a 
man who had political bravery of a sort which history always 
gives us cause to admire. And when such an act inaugurates a 
degree of liberality in government still to be regarded as in the 
line of progress, it offers still more to praise. 

The new charter, it has been said, left a definite mark on the 
later development of New England.” From it, we are told, are 
derived some of her traditional institutions. To this we may 
agree; but it has been asserted that for the charter and its con- 
sequences the colony had only England and a Dutch king to 
thank.?? We have seen too much of Mather and his fellow agents 
to assent to this. Certainly England was liberal, and her policy 
was far-sighted. Certainly William sincerely wished a govern- 
ment based on law and due recognition of popular rights. None 
the less, the State Papers of England to-day contain abundant 
proof that some of the most benevolent clauses in the new charter 
were suggested, not by English jurists, statesmen, or by William, 
but by Elisha Cooke, Thomas Oakes, Sir Henry Ashurst, and 
Increase Mather. That England went far in accepting their 
views is a tribute to her. But that they had to plead for their 
suggestions shows that neither England nor the agents alone won 
new political rights for Massachusetts. An able agency and a 
well-organized group of supporters, working with an enlightened 
and liberal government, established the new order. Less adroit 
diplomats, or more arbitrary English statesmen, would have 
changed the result. English liberality made the charter possible, 
and the agents’ knowledge of the colony’s demands, together 
with Mather’s appreciation that the time had come to desert 
the ideal of a strictly intolerant theocracy, gave final form to 
many of the most essential clauses in the new patent. No New 
Englander who profited by the new régime at the time, and no 


28. J. T. Adams, The Founding, p. 447. 2g. Ibid. 


260 INCREASE MATHER 


one of his descendants, proud of his country’s development, can 
forget William and his ministers, but still less can he lose sight 
of the fact that their good-will was turned to practical account 
by those men led by the first true colonial diplomat, Increase 
Mather. 

In his London sojourn, at the height of his career, Mather 
found the personality which won friends and parishioners in 
Boston useful in securing in London champions of his cause. 
His pen, trained in theological writing, proved its skill in politi- 
cal pamphleteering. His mind, stored with Latin and Greek, 
bits of science, and scriptural lore, showed a faculty for quick 
insight into problems of government and trade. His yearning for 
practical service realized itself in work among men concerned 
with sordid human affairs. His tolerance, growing with the 
years and the changing feeling of his flock, showed full develop- 
ment in the decisions he made in London. His breadth of mind 
made it possible for him to treat with Anglicans and Presbyte- 
rians, and to mix on equal terms with such different types as 
were represented by Nevil Payne, William Penn, and the Count- 
ess of Sutherland. At fifty-three he showed the maturity of the 
worldly wisdom, the controversial skill, the liberality of mind, 
and, above all, the practical shrewdness, which we have seen 
developing throughout his life. 

Characteristically, too, this highest growth of his stronger 
traits was accompanied by one more of those bursts of temper 
which are so often associated with vigorous natures like his. Just 
as he had flared up at Randolph, so he angrily said more than he 
meant to the counsellors of the king. Once more he paid the price 
in weakened influence. And, for our part, we may rejoice that 
his temper occasionally swept him off his feet. It is indispensable 
for us to remember that he was no model of perfection. Such a 
man could neither hold our interest nor win the footing he did 
in a court where human nature was to the fore. Most men at 
Whitehall were not paragons. So, if Mather lost his self-control 
on one occasion, sulked with Samuel Sewall,3° or frankly combat- 
ted Cooke, Oakes, and Wiswall, it is but one more proof that 
_ his nature was not only vigorous but human. He had no place 
_ in a world where pious speech and abstract discussion ruled. He 
_ could find his way most easily where there were conflicting human 
interests, where passions, friendships and enmities of this world 


30. Cf. MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 266. 


. ~~ 


THE NEW CHARTER 261 


were rife, and where a sharp tongue was not without use. In 
such a milieu he could do God’s work, as he saw it, by human | 
means. There he could express himself fully, and thence he could 
win a measure of success for his country, and, for himself, the 
respect of all who recognize liberality, breadth and strength of 


mind, strong and compelling personality, and, in a good cause, © 
self-forgetful courage. 


CHAPTER XVI 
THE BOSTONIAN IN LONDON 


H*® Mather done no more in England than pursue his polit- 
ical negotiations, one could hardly call him idle. But Eng- 
land was too full of interest to allow him to become engrossed 
merely by his stated task. Books, friends, and a keen delight in 
observation, claimed him no less in 1689 or 1691 than in any other 
of his busy years. Wherever he went, — and he travelled as much 
as his duties in London allowed,— he made friends. Wherever 
there were new books, or old ones attractively offered, he was 
likely to be found among the purchasers. So also, when there were 
Puritan chapels with eager congregations, or ecclesiastical de- 
bates in which a trained nonconformist might be heard, he could 
not keep away. 

He found old friends at Weymouth and at Dorchester," where 
he broke his journey; but London was his goal. Thither he has- 
tened, to be with Elisha Hutchinson and Samuel Nowell, to be 
invited to Congregational ministers’ conclaves, and to be eagerly 
welcomed and lodged with Major Thompson at Newington 
Green. There were crowded streets, gay dress, and the new 
buildings of Christopher Wren to delight little Samuel, and 
bookshelves heaped high to lure his father into hours of the pur- 
suit which is the student’s and book collector’s dearest joy. 
Whether he lived out at Newington, on bright days walking to 
and from the city with some good friend to whom he could talk 
and from whose advice he could profit, and, in bad weather, 
going by coach, hugging in his arms some calf-bound folio of 
sound divinity which he already saw proudly adorning the widest 
shelf of his study in the house on Middle Street, Boston; or 
whether he lived alone in his chambers in Copthall Court, 
Throgmorton Street,? in the heart of old London, amid the new 
building that was springing from the ruins of the Great Fire, 
he led a life of intoxicating wealth of opportunity. There were 
enough Puritan churches to fill many Sabbath mornings to his 
heart’s content. In the Royal Exchange, at the Temple, on the 


1. MS. Diary, 1688, May 16, 17. 2. Autobiography; Parentator. 


i, aoe 


THE BOSTONIAN IN LONDON 263 


elm-shaded Mall, or in the Parks, there was abundant diversion 
for many days.? A stone’s throw from his London lodgings was 
the new Drapers’ Hall; not far away was the Thames, where he 
may have joined Samuel Sewall in a morning swim; and his walk 
to Whitehall, or out to Hackney or Hoxton, was sure to be filled 
with glimpses, if no more, of persons and scenes which now fill 
some part in the historical pageant we conjure up as the London 
of the Revolution.‘ 

Some of those he met were the human forces with whom he had 
to deal in winning his case for the colony, and still others he 
recognized as leaders not to be slighted by a student of con- 
temporary learning. The men, in long coats embroidered and 
stiffened, wigs, and waistcoats which rivalled each other in their 
brocaded patterns, escorted ladies, some of whom had adopted 
Queen Mary’s new fashion of wearing chintz or East India 
calico, while all displayed skirts which had begun “to heave and 
swell” in anticipation of the coming of the hoop. All such 
gaily adorned figures may have appeared to Mather to be em- 
bodiments of earthly vanity, and he may have yearned for 
the vocabulary of a Nathaniel Ward to describe those “mymick 
Marmosets”’ in “Out-landish caskes,” * but Samuel was still boy 
enough to delight in the color and brilliance they lent to the dusty, 
ill-paved streets. | 

But when Samuel had gone to bed, and such street lights as 
there were shone on the dirty pavements, Mather had plenty 
to do, even though he never joined the gay crowds flocking to 
Drury Lane to see Mrs. Barry, or Mrs. Bracegirdle, and Mr. 
Betterton, act in the latest play by Wycherley or Shadwell. If | 
others sought out gaming houses or a cock-fight, or went to get a | 
glimpse of the wits at “Will’s,” to smoke and talk politics at © 
the ‘‘Grecian” or the “Rainbow,” the height of Mather’s dis- 
sipation is likely to have been an evening spent around the table 
at the New England Coffee House.® There would be Samuel 
Sewall, his head full of schemes for profitable importations to 
Boston, but none the less able to discuss with relish the most 
knotty of theological problems. There, too, would be Sir William 
Phipps, florid, fond of his tankard, letting an oath slip out now 


3. MS. Diary, 1688, July 5; 1689, Feb. 9. 

4. Ibid., 1688, Nov. 25, July 25; MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 264. 
5. N. Ward, The Simple Cobbler, p. 28. 

6. Cf., for example, MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 285. 


264 INCREASE MATHER 


and then in his ardor to make apparent his zeal against the 
French.?. With them would be Stephen Mason, confident in his 
prosperity as a city merchant, Elisha Hutchinson, Nowell, re- 
calling old days at Harvard, Sir Henry Ashurst, and, in some 
subtle way the acknowledged leader of them all, Mather himself. 
It was to him that Phipps one evening tossed over an old brass 
snuff-box, bidding him keep it, telling, with a twinkle in his eye, 
how it had once been carried by no less a man than the brave 
Sir Walter Raleigh.® 

When the tobacco smoke hung too thickly in the coffee-house, 
we might find Mather hurrying through the streets, mindful of 
the dangers of night-prowling bands of roisterers, seeking out 
the house of Robert Boyle or Richard Baxter.? 

The former he saw often. “All modern thought, so far as it is 
_ scientific, is largely dependent upon the labors of three men — 
_Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle and John Locke.” *° Boyle was 
sixty-two years old when Mather visited him in London. He was 
partly paralyzed, and handicapped by failing sight, but his men- 
tal powers were undimmed. To his house came such men as 
Burnet, Locke, Newton, and Halley, sure of finding there a 
modest, serious man, pale of face and slow of speech, who could 
talk to them of the Hebrew language, which he began to study in 
1686, of theology, or of current literature, and could show them 
in his laboratory his latest experiments with magnets or gases. 
There lay his chief interest. Thence came the germs of most of 
his pamphlets and communications to the Royal Society, an 


institution in which he always maintained an active interest and © 


to which he contributed much of the material it printed in its 
early years. A theory of his was useful to Pasteur, and we are 
told that ““what Pasteur and his collaborators have done, is to 
explain and amplify the points experimentally established by 
Boyle.” He designed and used an air-pump, independent of 
Guericke, and “established the science of pneumatics.” Repeat- 
edly he outlined theories later proved to be accurate, and incor- 
porated, to-day, among the fundamental truths of science. To 

7. Cf. N. Hawthorne, “Sir William Phips,” in Works, vol. xii. 

8. J. H. Tuttle, The Libraries, p. 311. The tobacco box is now owned by the Ameri- 
can Antiquarian Society. The tale of its ownership seems to rest solely on family 
tradition. 

g. Cf. MS. Diaries, 1688, May 29, June 20, July 16, Sept. 4, and elsewhere. 


10. C.O. Thompson, “Robert Boyle,” in American Antiquarian Society Proceedings, 
li, 54ff. 


<r A te 





ROBERT BOYLE 


From a painting in the National Portrait Gallery 


—~ 


43 





THE BOSTONIAN IN LONDON 265 


summarize in detail his varied activity would be impossible, but 
it is enough to remember that his cardinal principle was that 
scientific truth can be reached only by exact observation. He 
was a victorious opponent of scholasticism, and a pioneer in 
making experimental investigation the basis for scientific method. 
Surely, if any views were antipathetic to what we are told was the 
Puritan’s attitude toward natural philosophy, his were. Yet it 
was with him that Increase Mather, sometimes labelled the 
superstitious theologian, spent many hours, and his books filled 
a large place on Mather’s shelves. The New England divine, a 
humble admirer of Boyle’s methods, tried, as we have seen, to 
record phenomena observed in the colonies. For his pains he is 
called, two hundred years later, a credulous bigot. Quite dif- 
ferent must have been his reception by Boyle himself in 1688; for 
this leader among English scientists had an open mind and 
realized how much was then undreamed of in his, or anyone 
else’s, philosophy. To-day, when the experiments of centuries 
have been made, and laws have been deduced from them, we 
can exclude many reported occurrences as unreal, or explain them 
away by some formula of the moment. But Boyle and Mather 
argued from no such accumulation of data, and, for them, the 
stuff of science was often just such “‘illustrious providences”’ as 
they both collected.™ 

Boyle’s interest in Indians and in the Society for the Propa- 
gation of the Gospel among them ” was sufficient reason for his 
receiving Mather; but his visitor was obviously not content to 
talk only of theology in the presence of an adventurer in science. 
This we should guess from Mather’s previous dabbling in “natu- 
ral philosophy,” and we can be sure of it when we see how many 
of Boyle’s scientific books he bought or received from their 
author’s hands, or when we find him visiting Flamsteed, the 
Astronomer Royal, and with him ‘“‘viewing the Stars” or going 
to a shop to see “about telescopes.” 8 If Puritan theology was 
hostile to science, Boyle’s laboratory and London telescope shops 
were not fit places for a New England divine. Mather frequented 
them, none the less, for his intellectual curiosity would not allow 
him to close his eyes to any movement of the day. In science, 
moreover, he had long had a peculiar interest, and more than 

11. American Antiquarian Soctety Proceedings, il, $7, 59, 75) 77, etc. 


12. Ibid., pp. 65ff. 
13. MS. Diary, 1689, Feb. 7; MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 252. 


266 INCREASE MATHER 


once he had in this connection exhibited a leaning toward modern 
and advanced thought. 

If Richard Baxter ™ could not go far in discussing the dawnings 
of chemical research, he could talk from a memory well stored 
with tales of “illustrious providences.’’ He was unique among 
Puritans in his breadth of activity, and his character, his pa- 
tience, moderation, and truly Christian spirit, mark him above 
' the rank and file of his brethren. In Mather he seems to have 
found a man he could trust and admire, and no divine in the 
colonies was so eminent as not to be gratified by the attention of 
the greatest English Puritan. From him Increase Mather had 
not only a kind reception, but letters which praised his books 
and his style, in such words as: “You have very much gratifyed 
me by your two books. Your very style & mode of writing is so 
suitable to my genius, y* it pleases me even when I canot con- 


sent to the matter....I am so much taken with your history 
of prodigies, yt I purpose to put my scraps into yor hands (so 
much as is not lost)... if you will reprint your book while you 


stay here, & add these as a supplemt ffor I see you have good skill 
in selecting & contracting. I pray tell me whether you have any 
to sell (& where).” 5 In another letter Baxter wrote: “I loved 
your father...1 love you better for your learning, labours, and 
peaceable moderation.” ** Baxter was one Puritan who knew 
what “peaceable moderation” was, and that he recognized it in 
Mather shows that we have not read the latter’s character amiss. 

The most tangible testimony of Baxter’s feeling for Mather, 
and that most likely to have been grateful to the New Englander, 
was the dedication to ““The Glorious Kingdom of Christ, De- 
scribed and clearly Vindicated.”’ Baxter published this discussion 
of the problem of the millennium in 1691, and dedicated it “To 
Mr. Increase Mather, the Learned and Pious Rector of the New- 
England Colledge (now in London). He wrote on a theme that 
Mather had discussed in his “Mystery of Israel’s Salvation,” 
and disagreed on many points. But, he wrote, “I have read no 
man that hath handled it with so much Learning and Modera- 
tion as you have done. ... I know no man fitter, if I err, to detect 


14. Cf. DNB, and references there. 

1s. See an unpublished letter from Baxter to Mather, owned by Dr. Williams's 
library, in a volume of MS. letters of Baxter, pp. 217, 218. It is addressed to Mather 
“fat Major Thompson’s house at Newington.” 

16. Letter, August 3, 1691, in C. Mather, Magnalia, book III, part iii. 








RICHARD BAXTER 


From a painting in the National Portrait Gallery 


oi 
Wee ars gu = 
ie [ae 





44 





THE BOSTONIAN IN LONDON 267 


my Errours. And as your Candour is rather for my publishing, 
than suppressing these Papers; so truly I am so far from disliking 
a true Confutation of this (or any Errour that I shall publish) 
that I therefore direct these lines to you, to intreat you, to write 
(whether I be alive or dead) your Reasons against any momen- 
~ tous or Dangerous Errour which you shall here find: That as we 
thus friendly consent to such a Collision, or rather Communica- 
tion, as may kindle some further sparks of light, the Readers may 
be helpt by comparing all, the better to seek out the truth.” 
The spirit of both men appears in these lines, and it is a spirit 
sometimes sadly to seek in later controversies of scholars. That 
Mather’s “unworthy Fellow-Servant” dignified him by such 
consideration speaks volumes; and the little book, sure to be 
read widely, carried to all who took it up the news that out of 
New England and Harvard had come a theologian not to be 
neglected by any one who sought opinions of weight. 

On other days Mather spent the morning with Goodwin 
Wharton, younger son of Lord Wharton, at Hatton Garden; or, 
sometimes, we might find him dining at the George Tavern in 
Cornhill.17 He journeyed out to Windsor and Eton, and, when 
Sewall was in England, made a pilgrimage with him to the two 
great universities. At Oxford they saw “the Colledges and Halls, 
New-Colledge, Maudlin and Christ Ch. do most excell,” and 
at New College ‘eat and drank Ale, wine, Lent Cakes full of 
Currants, good Butter and Cheese.” ** So also they visited Cam- 
bridge, with its memories of their own John Cotton. They broke 
their sight-seeing by good meals at the Red Lion in the “Petit 
Curie,” and Sewall lovingly describes a dinner of ‘a Legg Mutton 
boiled and Colly-Flowers, Carrets, Roasted Fowls, and a dish 
piclease.”’ 

Faced with the problem of finding Mather as quickly as might 
be, we should probably do best to follow Stephen Mason’s ex- 
ample and look for him at the booksellers’. If he were not at 
Whitehall or Hampton Court, at the Custom House, or at the 
sign of the Atlas in Cornhill, talking to his friend Robert Morden, 
writer on geography and maker of maps and globes, or if he were 
not bargaining for a new clock for the Middle Street house, he 
would be most likely to be found near St. Paul’s Churchyard or 

17. MS. Diary, 1688, July 4, 21. 


18. [did., Aug. 2-4; MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 301. 
19. [bid., pp. 259, 260. 


268 INCREASE MATHER 


in Little Britain.2° There he must have become well known to 


such book-dealers as crack-brained John Dunton, or Richard — 
Chiswell.2* Probably he won the privilege of taking a volume — 


or two home upon occasion, to be read and returned; and we can 
still trace many volumes that he bought in those happy days 
when he used to write in his diary, “At booksellers shops.” 
Among his purchases were more than fifty books still pre- 
served, with inscriptions dating their acquisition during these 
years. Of these more than half were theological, or manuals 
of Hebrew. There are a few current tracts, with titles such as 
“The State of Protestants of Ireland under King James’s Gov- 


ernment,” “Articles Agreed upon by the Archbishops and — 


Bishops,” bound with other pamphlets, and “A Display of 
Tyranny.” > The book-collector’s perennial joy in a bargain is 
revealed in Mather’s copy of Gisbert Voet’s “‘Politicae Eccle- 


siasticae,’’ where he has written “£2-15-0. In N. E. [New Eng- | 
land] £3-14-0.” Of especial interest are such works as Robert — 


Cotton’s “Answer to motives offered by military men to Prince 
Henry,” the ““BIA@ANATOS” of John Donne, King Edward the 


Sixth’s “Own Arguments against the Pope’s Supremacy,” 


Richard Mather’s “Heart Melting Exhortations,’ Hugo Gro- — 


tius’s “De Coenae Administratione,’ and a “‘Rituale Romanum,” — 


strangest book of all for a Puritan!*4 Pointing to his interest in— 


prodigies and witches, we find John Webster’s “Displaying of 


Supposed Witchcraft,” John Spencer’s “Discourse concerning 
Prodigies,’” John Darrell’s ‘“Dialogical Discourses,’ and Elias 


~O-eb ae - 


—— 


Henckel’s ““Ordo et Methodus Cognoscendi Energumenos.” 75 


He would have classified these as science, and lumped them with 


the “Chemica Rationalis” of P. T., Erycius Puteanus’s “De 


20. MS. Diary, 1688, July 27, and memorandum as to a clock; I. Mather, Cases of 
Conscience, p. 283. 

a1. F. A. Mumby, Romance of Book-Selling, p. 189. 

22. I include in this number books so inscribed listed by J. H. Tuttle, in The 


Libraries of the Mathers, and similar volumes owned by the American Antiquarian — 


Society, but not listed in Tuttle, as well as one book noticed in the New England 


Historical and Genealogical Register, and’ one owned by W. G. Mather, Cleveland, 


Ohio. 


23. The first of these is owned by the American Antiquarian Society, the last two 


by the Massachusetts Historical Society. 


24. Of these books, all except the “Own Arguments” and the “Heart Melting Ex- 
hortation” are owned by the American Antiquarian Society. The other two are owned — 


by the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Yale University library, respectively. 


25. Of these the first is owned by the Harvard University library, the others by the — 


American Antiquarian Society. 





THE BOSTONIAN IN LONDON 269 


Cometa Anni 1618,” and Boyle’s ““Experimentorum Novorum 
Physico-Mechanicorum,” “Memoirs for the Natural History of 
Humane Blood,” “Experiments and Considerations about the 
Porosity of Bodies,” “Of the Reconcileableness of Specifick 
Medicines to Corpuscular Philosophy,” “Short Memoirs for the 
Natural Experimental History of Mineral Waters,” “Some Con- 
siderations touching Experimental Natural Philosophy,” and 
“Essay of the Great Effects of even Languid and Unheeded 
Motion.” % The last two have inscriptions which suggest that 
they were gifts of the author.27 However he got them, such a 
group of authentic, up-to-date scientific writings shows, once 
more, Mather’s intellectual progress in such matters. 

Certainly given by the author was Baxter’s “Church Con- 
cord,” 78 and so also was Thomas Beverley’s “Thousand Years 
Kingdom of Christ.” 2 From Samuel Clark came his annota- 
tions to the New Testament. Probably other books given to 
Mather are lost to-day, as must be many which he bought, and 
his library as it now exists contains many volumes which offer 
no hint as to when they were purchased. His London rooms in 
Copthall Court must have been crowded with the trophies of 
his literary quests. Probably he placed among them the two 
works which he noted particularly as ones to be sought in 
-London.3! Both, it is interesting to discover, were scientific. 
One was the ‘Germanic Ephemerides”’ for 1684,” and the other, 
the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society for 1685. 

When he travelled, Mather carried certain books with him. 
Annotations on the Gospels, a general Biblical commentary, a 

work by Alstedius, the Bible, in English and in Hebrew, a psalter, 


26. All owned by the American Antiquarian Society. 
27. Both are inscribed, “For Mr. Mather at Mr, Whitings in Copthall Court in 
_ Throgmorton Street.” 

28. Owned by the American Antiquarian Society. It is inscribed, ‘ex dono 
Authoris.” 
| 29. Owned by the American Antiquarian Society. It is inscribed, “‘Mr. I. Mather 
_,..Ex dono Authoris.” Beverley was preacher at Cutlers’ Hall, Cloak-Lane, London, 
and writer of prophecies. He believed and wrote that the millennial reign of Christ 
was to begin in 1697. See W. Wilson, The History and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches, 
ii, 63-65. 

30. Inscribed, “I. Mather, given to me by the Rev? Author M*? Samuel Clark at 
London 1689,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxxll, 420. Clark was 
the author of an annotated Bible which “‘is still a useful book.” See DNB. 

31. He noted these titles in a memorandum in the volume containing his diary for 
these years, as books to “Enquire after.” 


32. Cf. p. 175, note 78, ante. 


270 INCREASE MATHER 


a Latin grammar, and “Terentius.” 3 Whether this was the 
Jesuit, Terentius, or, more probably, the dramatist, — profane, — 
perhaps, but a fit comrade for Plautus, whose comedies Mather — 
bought twenty years before,— we cannot tell; but either writer’s 
presence among his luggage would mark the breadth of his 
tastes. , 

Now and then he had to give up precious minutes among the 
bookstalls, to seek out John van der Spriett, a Dutch artist, 
then in London. He painted a portrait of Mather upon which we © 
rely most for our mental image of him.’s The strongly modelled © 
face, far thinner than that of the 1683 engraving, the high cheek- 
bones, the slender hands, the long fingers, and, most of all, the 
pose, in which Mather seems to be expounding from a text open 
before him, suggest that the work really reflects character. Cer-_ 
tainly it is not the picture of a man to be likened to a tombstone. — 
There is too much life in the face and body, even as they appear — 
on canvas, to make possible an impression other than that ¢ ja_ 
personality of force, even if of a pedagogic and dogmatic type. — 

We can be sure as to the time and place of painting the Van ~ 
der Spriett portrait. In his diary for July 5, 1688, Increase | 
writes, “At R. White’s, who drew my effigies.” Robert White — 
engraved pictures of most of the great men of his time, and we — 
know that he made an engraving from the Van der Spriett por- _ 
trait, and dated it 1688. It seems, then, that by the first week in 
July, before he had been two months in England, Mather had 
had his portrait painted, and then engraved by one of the best-_ 
known workmen of the day. Before he left England a second 
print-maker had tried his hand at reproducing the likeness of the 
visitor from the colonies.37 ; 

With his portrait from the hands of a Dutch artist, and with 
engravings of it by the famous White and his pupil, Sturt, | 
Mather’s vanity, in one respect, should have been full fed. It 
must have been a further solace to see, here and there among the — 
booksellers’ stocks, books of his own offered for sale beside those — 





33. Memoranda in the volume containing his diary for these years list these books 

s “Libri mecum portandi.” ( 

34. The American Antiquarian Society owns to-day Mather’s copy of Terencell E 
comedies. I have found no record of his having owned the other “‘Terentius.” 

35. The painting is now owned by the Massachusetts Historical Society. Cf. K. B. 
Murdock, Ihe Portraits of Increase Mather, and see frontispiece. 

36. Cf. N. Hawthorne, Works, xii, 230. 

37. K. B. Murdock, The Portraits. 








THE BOSTONIAN IN LONDON 271 


of Baxter, Marvell, and Bunyan. To “The Wonders of Free 
Grace,” printed probably in 1690,38 was added his “Sermon 
Occasioned by the Execution of a Man,” published earlier in 
Boston. But the most read of his signed works in these years, 
though by no means the most interesting to-day, was the widely 
reprinted “De Successu Evangelii,” which appeared in 1688 in 
Latin, and, to judge by the number of its editions, seems to have 
been a singularly welcome tract.3® This was due, probably, to no 
literary merit, but to its brevity and its subject. Since the first 
explorations in America, Catholics and Protestants alike had 
seized upon the opportunity to introduce their beliefs to the 
Indians. In London, the Society for the Propagation of the 
Gospel was active, and sent its agents throughout the colonies. 
French missionaries, bearing the standard of Rome, braved the 
St. Lawrence wilderness. Mather, himself sincerely interested in 
the Indian conversions in which John Eliot was leader, saw in 
{ sm a subject sure to appeal to his brethren in all lands. His 
consciousness that his own reputation and that of his people 
would be well served abroad by some account of their success 
with their savage neighbors, led him to address to John Leusden, 
a Dutch scholar,’° a Latin letter with the title “De Successu 
Evangelii Apud Indos in Nova-Anglia.”’ This he published in 
London in 1688. There was a second edition in Latin in 1699, one 
in German in 1696, and, probably, one at Utrecht in 1693." 
From a letter of Leusden to Mather we learn that the tract was 
also printed in French.” An English version appeared in “The 
Brief Relation,” put out by Mather in connection with his agency, 

38. The title as given by J. L. Sibley, op. cit., i, 447, is: “ Wonders of Free-Grace, Or, 
A Compleat History of all the Remarkable Penitents That have been Executed at Ty- 
burn,” etc. (London, 1691); and the title explains sufficiently the nature of the book. 
I am informed by Mr. T. J. Holmes that the date of the book is 1690, not 1691. 

39. The title is: ““De Successu Evangelij Apud Indos in Nova-Anglia Epistola. Ad 
Cl. Virum D. Fohannem Leusdenum, Linguae Sanctae in Ultrajectina Academia Pro- 
fessorem, Scripta. A Crescentio Mathero Apud Bostonienses V.D.M. nec non Collegij 
Harvardini quod est Cantabrigiae Nov-Anglorum, Rectore. Londini, Typis 7. G. 1688.” 

40. Leusden was ‘‘one of the most learned Hebraists of his day,” professor at 
Utrecht from 1650 until his death in 1699. D. de S. Pool, Hebrew Learning among the 
Puritans, pp. 59ff. 

41. “De Successu... Jam recusa, & successu Evangelii apud Indos Orientales 
aucta. Ultrajecti, Apud Wilhelmum Broedeleth Anno 1699.” 

“Ein Brieff von dem Gluecklichen Fortgang des Evangelii... Zum andernmahl 
gedruckt und mit dem gluecklichen Fortgang des Neca bey, den Ost-Indianern 
vermehret. Utrecht gedruckt bey W. B. 1693... Halle, Gedruckt bey Christoph 


Salfelden 1696.” 
42. MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 679. 


272 INCREASE MATHER 


and there are hints that there was an Indian translation.# Cotton 
Mather used an English version in his life of John Eliot, which 
reached four editions, and was included in his “Magnalia.” 
Turner, in his ‘““Compleat History of the most Remarkable 
Providences,” also found a place for it.“4 

The letter is a brief matter-of-fact account of the triumphs of 
John Eliot, John Cotton, and Samuel Treat among the Indians. 
It is a news sheet rather than a literary work, but its subject gave 
it unique prominence. Leusden was delighted,** and besides hav- 
ing it translated, he expressed his gratitude by dedicating to 
Mather his edition of the Psalter in Latin and Hebrew, published 
at London in 1688.4° He calls Mather “Maxime Reverendo & 
Clarissimo viro . .. Verbi Divini Ministro Vigilantissimo, at- 
que Collegii Harvardini, quod est Cantabrigiae Nov-Anglorum 
Rectore & Doctori Celeberrimo ac Honorandissimo.” Allowing 
for conventional excess of phrase, that a scholar of Leusden’s 
rank thus addressed Mather in a book sold in the bookshops of 
St. Paul’s Churchyard must have impressed more than one sober- 
minded book-buyer, and gratified Mather’s own pride in no small 
degree. 

Meanwhile his “Testimony against Prophane and Super- 
stitious Customs” was reprinted in Boston, and no doubt there 
was circulated with it in London his anonymous “ Brief Discourse 
_ concerning the Unlawfulness of the Common Prayer Worship and 
_ of Laying the Hand on, and Kissing the Booke in Swearing,” 47 
which, when it appeared in Boston, in 1686, aroused Randolph’s 
ire, and seems to have involved Cotton Mather in difficulties 
with Andros and his following.4* They ascribed the book, 
apparently, to Cotton rather than to Increase, but Prince assigns 
it to the elder Mather.4#9 We have added confirmation of his 
authorship, for, in 1693, the book was answered in London, and 

43. Andros Tracts, ii, 166, where it is said that the work was “translated into divers 
Languages in New England.” 

44. See p. 171, ante, for reference to this book. 

45. MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 679. 

46. Ibid. The title was: “Liber Psalmorum, Editus a Johanne Leusden,” “‘Londini, 
. .. Sumptibus Samuelis Smith, ad insigne Principis in Caemiterio D. Pauli A. 1688.” 
Mr. H. W. Van Loon kindly lent me his copy of the book, whence I have drawn the 
title, and the quotation below. 

47. The title is: “A Brief Discourse Concerning the unlawfulness of the Common 
Prayer Worship. And Of Laying the Hand on, and Kissing the Booke in Swearing. 
By a Reverend and Learned Divine. Printed in the Year &c.” 


48. See p. 63, note 35, ante. 
49. Cf. J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, i, 449. 


THE BOSTONIAN IN LONDON 273 


to this answer Increase Mather replied in 1713, speaking of the 
original tract as his own.’° Moreover, a passage in the book 
itself makes Cotton’s authorship impossible.™ 

The work, although written some years before Mather came 
to England, aroused most attention during his agency, and so 1s 
best discussed in this chapter. It purports to be a letter written 
to someone who asked Mather why it was “unlawful to be 
present at, or to partake in the Common prayer worship,” and 
why one should not take oaths with one’s hand upon the Bible, 
or kiss the book in swearing. The inquirer published the letter 
in order that others might be convinced by it. In it we find once 
more, not the able political debater, but the divine and scholar 
preaching from authorities and texts. Buttressed by a host of 

_ learned writers, making no effort toward literary form, but still 
keeping his usual direct and simple utterance, Mather denounces 
# the Book of Common Prayer. 

There is no better example of the stress placed by Puritans 
on what seem to us trivial details of worship than such books as 
this. But there are churches to-day which oppose the use of any 
liturgy; and if such views are now considered narrow, in Mather’s 
day the question of the use of the Prayer Book was a serious one. 
Indeed, it was so grave as to separate from the Anglican Church 
some of its erstwhile followers. To us, time spent on such details 
seems wasted. To Mather and his brethren they were worthy of 
all the scholarly investigation he gave them. 

Not content with his own book, Mather reinforced it, so far 
as it concerned the manner of taking oaths,— a matter of moment 
in connection with the agency and the new charter,—by bringing 
out, or, at least, prefacing a London edition, printed in 1689, of 
Samuel Willard’s “A Brief Discourse Concerning that Ceremony 
of Laying the Hand on the Bible in Swearing.” * In his preface 
Mather points to the authorities who have regarded “ Kissing 
or Touching the Book in taking a solemn Oath” as an evil 
practice. Thence he turns to more practical arguments, men- 

50. Andros Tracts, 1, 180. 

51. The author writes: “As for mee... My Father was an Holy and a Learned man, 
and one that Suffered much for his Non conformity; should I once go to hear Common 
Prayer I... Know not how I should bee able to look my Father in the Face in the other 
world.” Obviously, Cotton could not have written this in 1686. Randolph’s ascription 
to him throws an interesting sidelight on his denunciations of the Bostonians, since, 
in this case, he does not seem to have read the book on which he based a charge! 


52. The work is reprinted in Andros Tracts, i, 179ff. The preface is signed M. I., as 
is Mather’s preface to a book of his brother’s. Cf. p. 97, ante. 


274 INCREASE MATHER 


tioning the method of oath-taking used in Scotland, in Europe, 
and in certain English Admiralty courts. He even quotes a vote 
of Parliament in 1649. He closes with the reason for the publica- 
tion: “It is... hoped that this Disputation may excite others to 
enquire into, and further clear the controverted Question.” ® 
A less controversial preface was that which Mather wrote for 
John Flavel’s “Exposition of the Assembly’s Catechism.” ™ 
Flavel died in Dartmouth in 1691 and when Mather came there 
in March, 1692, on his way back to Boston, he took the oppor- 
tunity to pay tribute to the memory of an old friend by adding an 
introduction to one of his books about to be published. In it, 
hastily written as it must have been, there speaks the sincere 
affection of an American Puritan for one of his English brethren. 
One other book of Mather’s dates from these years, his “Brief 
Account Concerning Several of the Agents of New-England, Their 
Negotiation at the Court of England.” * Internal evidence makes 
it certain that Mather was the author of this anonymous tract. 
It is a straightforward account of his negotiation, followed by a 
thorough exposition of the reasons for accepting the new charter 
and a complete defence of its good points. To this are added 
certain practical suggestions, advising the General Court to make 
good laws, and for “the Upholding of Religion” to pass acts to 
“Encourage an Able and Faithful Ministry.” The college should 
be put “in such Hands, as will make it their Concern to Pro- 
mote and Propogate Vertue and Learning” (pp. 295ff.). Mather 
also proposes that judges, sheriffs, and justices of the peace, be 
chosen from “Men fearing God” (p. 296). In these pages 1s made 
perfectly clear Mather’s point of view toward the future. Con- 
gregationalism could thrive no longer by exclusive privilege. That 


53. Andros Tracts, 1, 182. 

$4. J. Flavel, 4n Exposition of the Assembly's Catechism. Mather also wrote, while 
in England, a preface for Flavel’s England’s Duty, Under the present Gospel-Liberty, 
dating it 1689. He also joined with his brother, John Howe, and others in signing a 
preface to Flavel’s TAANHAOTIA. 4... Discourse of ... Mental Errors, published in 
1691. 

55. “A Brief Account Concerning Several of the Agents of New-England, Their 
Negotiation at the Court of England: With Some Remarks on the New Charter Granted 
to the Colony of Massachusets. Shewing That all things duely Considered, Greater 
Priviledges than what are therein contained, could not at this Time rationally be ex- 
pected by the People there.” London, 1691. Reprinted in Andros Tracts, 11, 271ff., 
to which edition all references here are made. 

56. The author writes in the second paragraph, p. 273: “‘When I began my Voyage 
from Boston for London (which was in April, 1688). This fits no one of the agents but 
Mather. } 





THE BOSTONIAN IN LONDON 275 


Mather gave up without protest. Henceforth his church must 
succeed by a campaign of education, and by the appointment of 
such civil officers as would not shut their ears to the claims of the 
first settlers’ religion. For the next ten years Mather worked 
along these lines. 

He saw as early as 1691 that a real campaign was in store. He 
knew that he would have to face criticism, not only from too | 
zealous advocates of American independence, opposed to any 
governor not of their own choice, but also from the ardent old- 
school Congregationalists, who believed that the right to vote 
should be linked with a religious test. To disarm such opponents 
he appended to his story of his work in England a letter from 
“the most Eminent Nonconformist Divines in London.” *" Bates, 
Mead, Alsop, Howe, Annesley, Griffith, Quick, and others testt- 
fied to his ‘inviolate Integrity, excellent Prudence, and unfaint- 
ing Diligence,” his “Talent to transact Affairs of State,” and his 
insight into “the true Moment of things,’ which led him to 
prefer “the Publick Good to the vain Conceits of some, that more 
might have been obtained” (pp. 297, 298). Prejudiced testi- 
mony, perhaps, but confirmed by a private letter from an Eng- 
lishman to his brother in New England. 

A decade after this tract appeared, an eager foe of Mather took 
occasion to remark that it was but an “‘Emdério,” stifled as soon 
as it was born.’? But, as Mather’s friends promptly pointed out,”° 
a copy of the book was sent to the colony and read to the General 
Court, where it doubtless served its purpose, and we can be sure 
the printed work was never cancelled. On the other hand, the 
charge that Mather planned to have it appear after he left Eng- 
land, and that his friend, Mr. Baily, erred in bringing it to light 
too soon, thereby provoking its author to one more angry out- 
burst, seems to be supported by the facts. But no harm was done, 
and Mather’s ire quickly cooled. 

In one paragraph the question of a charter for Harvard ts dis- 
cussed. To secure such a charter had been one of the main objects 
of Mather’s pilgrimage. He could not, he says, achieve it, so long 
as the civil government of the colony was unsettled. When the 
new charter was granted, confirming, as it did, Harvard’s owner- 


57. Pp. 297ff. Cf. Andros Tracts, ii, 312. 

58. MHS Proc., xxxiv, 215. 

sg. S. G. Drake, The Witchcraft Delusion, ii, 150. 
60. Andros Tracts, ii, 299, 317. 


276 INCREASE MATHER 


ship of its property, Mather was advised not to apply for a special 
patent incorporating the college, but to get the General Court to 
grant a charter and “make it an University, with as ample 
Priviledges as they should think necessary; and then transmit 
that Act of the General Court to England, for the Royal Approba- 
tion; which would undoubtedly be obtained.” “I look upon this 
Particular alone,’ Mather adds, ‘“‘to be well worth my going to 
England, and there serving half an Apprenticeship; for that 
no small Concernment of Religion, and the Happiness of future 
Generations, are comprehended in this Matter respecting the 
Colledge.” * At our distance it certainly seems wiser to have 
planned to incorporate Harvard by vote of the colonial assembly, 
where local opinion could be represented, than to have secured 
by individual efforts, three thousand miles from Cambridge, a 
document which might be satisfactory to no one but the rector 
and the king and council. . 

Many years later, Cotton Mather, writing of his father’s ser- 
vices to the college during his agency, quotes Increase as saying: 
“TI procured in Donations to the Province and the College at 
least Nine Hundred Pounds more than all the Expences of my 
Agency came to”; and adds: “it was His Acquaintance with, and 
His Proposal to, That Good-Spirited Man, and Lover of all Good 
Men, Mr. THOMAS HOLLIS, that Introduced his Benefactions 
unto that College; to which his Incomparable Bounty has anon 
flow’d unto such a Degree, as to render him the Greatest Benefactor 
it ever had in the World.” Mather, in his account of his work, 
refers to one legacy of five hundred pounds secured by him for 
Harvard.” 

Thomas Hollis and his descendants were such good friends to 
the college that it is worth while to make some examination of 
the suggestion that Mather first interested them. The facts 
accessible are these. In 1719 Hbllis’s first donation arrived. 
On Increase Mather’s request, and because he “‘was instrumental 
in procuring these donations,” the Corporation voted the interest 
of the gift to his grandson. Leverett, in his diary, says Mather 
“might be instrumental in procuring it.’ Benjamin Colman 
wrote Hollis as to Mather’s claim and the use the money had 
been put to, and the donor replied, approving the application 

61. Andros Tracts, ii, 295 ff. 


62. Parentator, pp. 151,170; Andros Tracts, li, 295. 
63. For Hollis, cf., for example, Quincy, passim, 





THOMAS HOLLIS 





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THE BOSTONIAN IN LONDON at be 


made of his bounty, and said, explaining the origin of his in- 
terest: “I have had many thoughts of showing some liberality 
to it [the college] ever since the death of my honored uncle, 
Robert Thorner, who made me one of his trustees.” On these 
data Quincy rests his case, writing: “By thus carrying back the 
orgin of his good intentions to a time antecedent to any possible 
influence of Dr. Mather, he obviously intended to exclude any 
acknowledgment of it.”’ To this he adds a remark that this “‘is 
sufficient to show the groundlessness of Dr. Mather’s claim to 
instrumentality” in procuring Hollis’s bounty.” 

Fortunately we can go further. We know that Robert Thor- 
ner’s will was not made at “a time antecedent to any possible 
influence of Dr. Mather’ but was dated the 31st of May, 1690. 
Furthermore, the very wording of the will shows that Mather 
was in Thorner’s mind. “I devise give and bequeath unto Har- 
vard College in New England whereof Mr. Increase Matther is 
now President, the suine of five hundred pounds to be paid unto 
the President of the said Colledge.” ® We know also that 
Thorner had known Nathaniel Mather for many years, and had 
been intimate with his father-in-law, William Benn, and that 
Increase saw Thorner in 1688 and, in 1689, had a letter from him 
which spoke of his purpose to help Harvard. Also Hollis wrote 
Mather: “you seem... to have forgotten me, thé in my letter 
to you I hinted, I was the man that gave you a minute out of 
my Unkle Thorner’s will... & you said you would cause it to 
be recorded in your Colledg Registers — approving of my said 
Unkles pious thought, thé as yet very distant — I was willing of 
my own substance to make a present to y® same purpose.” He 
approves using the interest of his gift as Mather suggested, and 
adds: ‘“‘I have thd‘ living — or by Will to order over to you a 
larger parsel [of] goods, the produce to be added for same uses 
to the summe you now have in hand.” This letter, written in 
1719, makes it clear that Hollis and Mather met in England, that 
Thorner’s nephew then gave the Rector a minute from his uncle’s 
will, and that, even after Mather left the President’s chair at 
Harvard, Hollis wrote to him of his benevolent intentions and 
accepted his views as to how the gifts should be used.®” 


64. Quincy, 1, 232, 235, 236; Harv. Rec., pp. 446, 447. 

65. New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xlv, 53, and cf. Quincy, i, 186. 
66. MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 677 and n., 678; MS. Diary, Sept. 13, 1688. 

67. For the letter, see New England Historical and Genealogical Register, i1, 265. 


278 INCREASE MATHER 


Therefore, by the same reasoning that Quincy employed, we 
can draw from the material now accessible the conclusion that 
Mather certainly played a part in interesting Thorner. We 
know that he knew Hollis, and kept up the friendship for years 
after 1691. Generosity of the sort that made Hollis an honored 
name in New England can rarely be traced to a single episode, or 
the influence of one man, but we can hardly escape the con- 
clusion that Mather’s relations to Thorner and to Hollis make it 
highly probable that he was, as his son declared, the agent whose 
efforts “Introduced” the generous Englishman’s “ Benefactions 
unto that Col/ege.” Quincy’s view, then, drawn as it was from 
an incomplete set of documents, seems to miss the truth. Instead, 
we may accept the “New England Weekly Journal’s” state- 
ment, on April 19, 1731: ““When the Rev. Dr. [ncrease Mather 
was Agent for the Province in London, Anno 1690, he was known 
in his Character of President or Rector of Harvard College to 
Mr. Hollis, who then told him that he purpos’d to remember said 
College in his Will, which was no doubt gratefully accepted & 
encouraged by Mr. Mather.” ® 

If Leverett, not as thoroughly in touch with the records as it 
is possible for us to be, thought Mather “might be” the cause 
of Hollis’s kindness, he was positive in his assertion that Mather 
directed the generosity of Nathaniel Hulton to Harvard. We 
can verify this, inasmuch as Hulton wrote Mather, saying: “It 1s 
my resolution to give one hundred pounds, I say £100, which is 
as much as I can do... and this £100 I do wholly and absolutely 
leave to you to lay it out upon something that will bring in a 
yearly revenue forever.” 7° Hulton died in 1693, and the last 


codicil of his will reads, “J give & Bequeath to Mr. Jncrease 


68. Quoted in New England Historical and Genealogical Register, ii, 266. In 1731, Col- 
man wrote: ““To the Honour of my Country, I must add, that it was some Account Mr. 
Hollis received from us of the free and catholic Air we breath at our Cambridge, where 
Protestants of every Denomination may have their Children educated, and graduated in 
our College, if they behave with Sobriety and Virtue; that took his generous Heart and 
fix’d it on us, and enlarg’d it to us.”’ B. Colman, 4 Sermon ... Upon the News of the 
Death of ... Thomas Hollis, Esq. But we have seen that Hollis himself said he was first 
interested when he learned of his uncle’s bequest. If Harvard’s liberality was what ap- 
pealed, it must, then, have been its liberality prior to 1690, or, its liberality under Mather! 

The Religious History of New England says (p. 154) that Mather’s liberality toward 
Baptists led Hollis to be generous to Harvard — an attempt, apparently, to reconcile 
Colman’s statement, given above, with the other facts we have cited. 

On the whole matter, cf. also, Haro. Rec., ii, 832, 833, and Parentator, p. 209. 

69. Quincy, 1, 235. 

70. New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xlvi, 237. : 


THE BOSTONIAN IN LONDON 279 


Mather Minister of y* Gospel in New-England y* Sume of one 
hundred pounds of Lawfull mony of England for y* use of y® 
Colledge there, of which He is President.” “™ This gift, with 
Thorner’s, made six hundred pounds — no mean contribution 
from Mather’s labors for Harvard. 

There were past benefactors to remember, too, and Mather, 
we have reason to believe, went to see Lady Holworthy, whose 
husband’s generosity still keeps his name alive at Harvard.” In 
such errands, as in his interviews with two kings, the Rector of 
the New England college made sure that the name of his cherished 
“academy” should not be forgotten in England. 

In corresponding with Anthony Wood, Mather turned his 
knowledge of Harvard and its graduates to the service of the 
cantankerous Oxford historian. Though “he never spake well 
of any man,” Wood found Mather’s information useful, and sent 
to him a presentation copy of the “Athenae Oxonienses.”’ 73 
More than that, he took pains to record in his diary that Mather, 
alone of all the nonconformists he had known, had been con- 
stantly civil—no mean admission for a man of Wood’s acid 
temper toward dissenters.” 

Such activities and sojournings, and, most of all, the conduct 
of his political skirmishings at court, took much money, and 
whatever his delight in his daily round, Mather could not close 
his eyes to sordid considerations of pounds and pence. In his tale 
of his agency he describes his need of funds, and how, failing 
prompt supplies from Boston, he had to borrow on his own 
security in order to meet the current expenses of his agency.” 
In a manuscript of his we read that he “was necessitated to give 
money to clerks, & to solicitors; sometimes § lb.; sometimes Io 
lb.; sometimes 30 lb.; sometimes 40 lb.; at once. And that by 
the counsel and persuasion of friends of New England, I have 
borrowed 300 Ib. & besides that, I have spent of my own money 
150 lbs.”’ He asked the colony to pay the £300, but “‘as for the 
150 lbs.,” was “willing to give it freely.””° Sewall, we know, lent 

71. New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xlv, 163, xli, 58, and Haro. 
Rec., p. 386. 

72. MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 502. 

73. DNB, “Anthony Wood, 1632-1695”; J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, i, 595, 
597; MHS Proc., xxviii, 28, 346ff. 

74. The Life and Times of A. Wood, ed. A. Clark (Oxford, 1891-1900), ili, 396. 

75. Andros Tracts, i1, 293. 


76. Manuscript with his Autobiography, in the library of the American Antiquarian 
Society. 


280 INCREASE MATHER 


him one hundred and seventy pounds for use in New England’s 
cause.77 Stephen Mason lent one hundred and fifty pounds more, 
at a meeting at the New England Coffee House,7* and wrote 
Bradstreet that the agents needed money, offering to supply 
Mather if payment could be guaranteed by the colony.7® Richard 
Wharton estimated that two thousand pounds would be neces- 
sary in order to get “some effectual order... for releife of New 
England.” 8 In view of this figure, Mather’s answer to those 
who criticized his expenditures seems hardly necessary. ‘“‘ These 
little men,” he writes, speaking of those who attacked him, “know 
not what it is to attend in the Courts of Kings for Four Years 
together. ... J never demanded the least Farthing as a Recom- 
pence for the Time I spent in attending on their Affairs... . I 
suppose all Reasonable men will own That Reproaches cast on 
me for my Expensiveness in the Public Service are most Ungrate- 
ful and Unworthy.” * 

' Such funds as Mather had for his own use, had, of course, to be 
shared with his family in Boston. There, in his deserted study, 
‘Maria Mather knelt, day after day, to pray for her absent hus- 
band. SBus, whatever her zeal, she had little enough time for 
such devotions, with seven children, one of them failing in health, 
‘one very young, and one, Sarah, preparing for her marriage to 
‘Nehemiah Walter.** With political upheavals in Boston, soldiery 
often in the streets, and her husband abroad, a housewife had 
many pressing concerns. Cotton was able to help her somewhat, 
perhaps, but he was busy in the affairs of the colony, quarrelling 
with Moodey,* and producing books as fast as they could be 
printed. 

Tragedy came to the Mather household in the death of Na- 
thaniel, that boy so dear to father and brother as “Early Piety 
Fxemplified.”’ He died on October 17, 1688.8 Increase Mather 
wrote in his diary on November 3 his fears ‘““yt my Nathaniel is 
much indisposed as to his Health,” and prayed for his recovery. 

77. MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 271, 286, 288. 

78. Ibid., 284, 285. 

79. Ibid., Series 4, v, 256. 

80. [bid., Series 6, v, 17, 18. 

81. Andros Tracts, ii, 322, 323. 

82. I. Mather, Sermon Concerning Obedience, Preface. 

83. Cf. J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, iii, 300. 

84. Cf. MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 339. 


9 
85. “Early Piety Exemplified” was the title of Cotton Mather’s life of his brother. 
It is reprinted in the Magnalia. 


THE BOSTONIAN IN LONDON 281 


On December 3 he writes: “I had ye heavy tidings of ye death 
of my dear Nathaniel, for whom I must mourn many dayes. Alas 
yt so hopeful a branch of my Family is gone. A youth of Ig... 
very pious, his Learning such as I never knew his equall of his 
years. The church of God hath sustained a loss by his death. 
As for me I can not express how great my loss is in being de- 
prived of such a praying son!” ® To Anthony Wood he wrote | 


of his son: “God saw meet to remove him to a better world. | 
Hee was a young man of stupendous learning and great piety.” §7 
Great as was his grief, there was, in his faith, strength by which 
to bear it, and, in his devotion to his purpose, courage to keep 
him in England and hard at work. 

In his writing during his years in London Mather wandered far 
from his usual theological paths, but he did not turn homeward 
without leaving his mark on a movement of importance for the 
history of nonconformity.*® English Presbyterians and English 
Congregationalists, in 1691, made a sincere effort to wipe out 
minor points of difference by uniting on the essentials held 
by both sects. Into this movement, unfitting as it was for a 
hide-bound conservative, or for a champion of strict Congrega- 
tionalism, Mather entered heartily. He saw that more breadth 
and, above all, more unity were needed, if the nonconformists 
were to survive and carry on their work in serving God according 
to His will. 

The Presbyterians were distinguished from their Congrega- 
tional brethren chiefly by their interest in church organization, 
and in their belief that each congregation should form part of 
a closely knit national church, with a definite scheme of govern- 
ment. Against this, Congregationalism asserted, as we have 
seen, the virtual independence of the local congregation. Per- 
secution, and a growing sense of the need of one strong body in 
place of two, in order to face better the united front of episcopal 
England and the hated army of Rome, brought Matthew Mead, 
friend of Mather and Congregational divine of rank, and John 
Howe, a Presbyterian, who, ever since 1659, had been an ally 
and guide of the Rector of Harvard, to take the lead in nego- 
tiating for the union of their sects. Howe held broad views, but, 
by his desire for a national organization, had been led gradually 

86. MS. Diary, Nov. 3, Dec. 3, 1688. 


87. MHS Proc., xxviii, 347. 
88. For what follows, see W. Walker, Creeds and Platforms, pp. 440ff. 


282 INCREASE MATHER 


from the Congregational to the Presbyterian fold. With him 
and Mead, Mather eagerly joined. Little difficulty was found 
in reaching an agreement. On April 6, 1691, there was brought 
forth formally a document designed to serve as a basis for the 
union of the two churches. Its ardent supporters hastened to 
carry its message throughout the country. Useful as the “Heads 
of Agreement” for the Union were, they suffered from a tend- 
ency, inherited by modern political platforms, to phrase broadly 
in order to cover divergent practice, rather than to define just 
what was the policy designed. The document was, moreover, 
largely Congregational in its view. For these reasons, ‘and others, 
it did not survive in England, and failed to become the founda- 
tion for permanent unity among nonconformists. None the less, 
no one, who sees to-day constant efforts toward the breaking of 
denominational barriers defeated by the prejudices they attack, 
can criticize too harshly~-the deficiencies of this seventeenth- 
century attempt. Whatever its results, or its merits as a working 
arrangement, that it aimed toward church unity speaks highly 
for the liberality of its sponsors. It takes a churchman of broad 
vision to advocate to-day the merging of his form of worship 
with another’s, and in 1691 denominational lines were no less 
carefully cherished than at the present. 

Mather’s connection with this progressive movement bore fruit 
in New England, at least. His son, receiving a copy of the 
English agreement, published it, and, as late as 1708, it bore a 
great part in shaping a new ecclesiastical constitution for Con- 
necticut Congregationalism. There was little in it which differed 
from current colonial usage. That little chiefly concerned the 
ministers’ authority to hold church councils without their con- 
gregations. In other words, the plan tended toward a less demo- 
cratic order. It is, perhaps, not reading too much into the record 
to see here the first evidence of a belief that grew in Mather’s 
mind in the coming years, when he conceived that the welfare 
of his church demanded firm leadership by trained men who 
could keep its traditions inviolate, and protect them from dan- 
gerous alteration which might proceed from a strictly democratic 
control. Possibly John Wise was right in believing that, in eccle- 
siastical as in civil government, the governed should guide. At 
the same time, if the original brand of Puritan piety was worth 
saving, and Mather believed it was, an oligarchic church govern- 
ment was the only safe means of securing it in an age when men 


THE BOSTONIAN IN LONDON 283 


were inclined to change their religious ideas as they changed their 
thought on other affairs. We may moralize, and declare that a 
church can live only by the support of its members, and that, 
therefore, their wishes should shape its course. True as this may 
be, Mather believed, as many wise men have done since his time, 
that leadership and education by strong men can influence the 
popular will and that, with such men to guard them, institutions 
can be kept in popular esteem. 

With such new ideas, and with the accumulated experience of 
four years in the centre of the English-speaking world, Mather 
turned toward home. He left England reluctantly, for he had 
thought seriously of taking up his life-work there. He knew, too, 
that, however warm his fireside in Boston, however eager his 
welcome there, return to the colony meant the facing of odds new 
in his experience. His agency had committed him to the new 
charter. His fortunes were linked with its success, and with that 
of Sir William Phipps. We have seen that he had much to fear 
both from too zealous advocates of the old Congregational con- 
trol of the state and from the dreamers who longed for complete 
colonial independence. His printed defence of his agency was no 
idle exercise in pamphleteering. It might well be necessary for 
him in the coming months. Cotton Mather, too, guessed the 
probable turn of affairs, and wrote political allegories which were 
by no means dull, and were certainly effective in their exaltation 
of his father’s services and their exposition of the futility of the 
objections of his opponents.*? 

Mather came home as a man who had done much for New 
England. He had proved that he could see and accept the changes 
that progress demanded from church and state. He had met 
Anglicans and had learned to respect and admire more than one, 
of them. He had embraced a code broad enough to include Eng- / 
lish Presbyterianism, and had advanced far beyond the stage of 
a mere provincial divine. His pamphlets, in a style called even 
to-day not unworthy of Swift,°® the master of the genre, had 
shown his ability to turn his pen to other subjects than popular 
science or theology. His tongue had proved persuasive among 
merchants and politicians, and his personality had served him 
well. But he had to pay for his winnings in the opposition of 


89. Andros Tracts, ii, 325ff.,. and note on authorship, Idid., p. 324. 
go. R. H. Murray, Dudlin University, p. 51. 


284 INCREASE MATHER 


those whose idols he broke. Once in the full glare of the political 
stage, he must expect to take his share of abuse from the gallery. 

All this he could talk over with Phipps on the long voyage. 
But the governor was, no doubt, more interested 1n what went on 
on deck. When the sea was rough, or the crew unruly, he could 
bear a hand, mindful of his prowess in the days when he com- 
manded the A/gier Rose. Puritanism, and introspection, were 
little remembered when he helped the crew to crowd on sail in a 
vain eftort to overtake four French vessels sighted miles away. 
Mercifully, the chase was vain, for the enemy craft were men of 
war not merchantmen, and had they turned to fight, Mather 
might have found himself a captive in some French prison. His 
position, on the day when his ship and its convoy did come into 
contact with a French vessel, must have been like that of Dr. 
Burnet, aboard the Prince of Orange’s fleet in the English 
Channel. While Phipps bustled about on deck, and joined 
heartily in the cheer that greeted the taking of the enemy as a 
prize, Mather, amid the excitement, may have remembered with 
a twinge of regret the good old days when he was a private citi- 
zen, little concerned with England’s wars. Then the largest 
interests he had had at stake were the printing of his newest 
book, or the maintenance of his position against the criticism of 
his elders. He may well have thought of the days when he 
preached the duty of a minister to keep out of affairs of state. 
Surely he did not regret that he had ignored his own teaching in 
the interest of a cause which transcended in importance the duty 
of a pastor to his flock; but he may have had to contend, now 
and then, with a selfish yearning for the ease that had been his 
when he was no more than a student and a teacher of a devoted 
band of the faithful.” 

But, on the 14th of May, 1692, he surely forgot all else in his 
joy at seeing on the horizon the first smoky outlines of the New 
England coast.% All day the shore came nearer, and he could 
point out to Samuel one after another of the landmarks grown 
familiar in the years he had lived among them. The sun was 
setting as they came up Boston harbor, and the beacon on the 
hill above the town was black against the crimson sky. 

In the dusk, the frigate was at last safely moored beside the 
wharf. The street was thronged, and eight companies of militia 
were drawn up to receive the new governor. It was Saturday 


gi. Autobiography. g2. [bid. 


THE BOSTONIAN IN LONDON 285 


evening, and the Puritans’ Sabbath had begun, so that no volleys 
could be fired to salute His Excellency; but here and there in the 
crowd, murmuring its curiosity and excitement, some bold spirits 
may have ventured a cheer of welcome.*? With their military 
escort making a brave show, the new arrivals paraded up King 
Street toward the Town-house, the windows of which were now 
brightly lit by many candles. Within, Mather and Phipps were 
greeted by eager citizens of rank. The aged Bradstreet surely 
was there to welcome his successor in office. Stoughton, expe- 
rienced in the political activities of the colony since its early days, 
cannot have been far away, and one likes to think that Danforth, 
although the coming of the new government deprived him of his 
high place, was none the less ready with his words of greeting. 

In their presence, Phipps began to read his commission. 
Perhaps Mather, better versed in the technicalities of piety, 
frowned in warning, reminding him that on the Sabbath civil 
business should be forgotten. Perhaps the memory of the patient 
crowd in the street, or eagerness to see once more the wife who 
had stayed in Boston while he won, in England, new dignities for 
her, checked Phipps’s speech. Certainly he broke off in the 
middle of his discourse, and once more took his place with the 
escort waiting for him before the Town-house door.” 

The march continued across the Mill-Creek to the extreme 
north end of the town, and up the street whose name still com- 
memorates the provincial charter, to Phipps’s brick house near 
the Charlestown ferry.** Here, outside what was now the gov- 
ernor’s mansion, Phipps parted for the time from the man who 
was now not only his spiritual mentor but his chief political ally. 
We may imagine how, standing in the lighted doorway, in his 
purple coat and with his sword by his side, he saluted gaily, as 
the eight companies took up their march once more. 

This time they escorted little Samuel Mather and his father, 
who, that night, was second only to His Excellency Sir William 
Phipps. As the column turned into Middle Street, the sound of 
marching feet must have brought joy to Maria Mather’s heart. 


93. The basis of the description of Mather’s arrival is Sewall’s note in his diary for 
May 14, 1692 (MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 360): “Sir William arrives in the Nonsuch 
Frigat: Candles are lighted before He gets into Townhouse. Eight Companies wait on 
Him to his house, and then on Mr. Mather to his. Made no volleys because ’twas 
Satterday night.” For the rest, there is only fancy to guide. 

94. Cal. State Papers, Am. and W, I., xiii, 2283. 

gs. Cf. A. H. Thwing, The Crooked and Narrow Streets, pp. 63, 64. 


286 INCREASE MATHER 


Before her house the procession halted.% And, as she flung open — 


the door, she saw hurrying to her the much-travelled boy of her 
heart and that tall familiar figure she loved and used to call 
“the best man in the whole world.” 9” 

For that evening, we may well believe, for those two, politics, 
church and all faded before the joy of home-coming. As the last 
curious spectator disappeared down the dark street, within doors 
Increase Mather sat once more at the head of the long pine table, 
with Abigail clinging to his hand, Cotton at his right, eagerly 


picking up every word, and Maria beaming her delight as she © 





-_see Se 


set out supper and filled the tankards. There, with the soft — 


candlelight falling on the faces of his wife and children, and 


shining dimly through the door of his study on the dull calf of his — 


precious books, he talked with a new zest of the glories of White- 
hall, and how he had been welcomed by the queen. 


96. Mather’s house was on Middle St. (now Hanover St.), near North Bennet St. 


97. Autobiography. 


CHAPTER XVII 


“DOLEFULL WITCHCRAFT” 
MONTH after his arrival home, Mather wrote to the Earl 


of Nottingham, thanking him for his efforts toward securing 
the charter, and assuring him “that the Generallity of their 
Maj‘** Subjects (so far as I can understand) doe with all thank- 
fulness receive the favours which by the new Charter are granted 
to them.” The General Court ordered a day of thanksgiving for 
the safe installation of the new government, and the return of 
“Mr. Increase Mather.’ * Thus far the new régime seemed wel- 
come and secure. 

When Phipps and Mather landed, there were, however, grave 
troubles not far from Boston, and from them grew a series of 
events which cloud the record of New England history as it is 
read to-day. In jail were several score of colonists, awaiting final 
trial on the heinous charge of witchcraft. One of Phipps’s first 
problems was how they should be treated; and his decision, how- 
ever it may have appeared at the time, has tended in our day 
to bring discredit on his whole administration. 

Nowhere more than in the tale of the “witchcraft delusion’ 
in New England, is it necessary to confine one’s self to the few 
facts surely established in contemporary records. Nowhere are 
conjectures, opinions, or generalizations of later times more mis- 
leading. This is particularly true when we consider the relation of 
Cotton and Increase Mather to the whole affair; for, with the 
human tendency to find individual scapegoats for all errors of the 
past, later history has delighted in laying the “‘persecution”’ of 
the Salem witches at the door of the two Mathers. Cotton has 
suffered most, for few critics have been so uninfluenced by the 
facts known in regard to Increase, as not to modify their state- 
ments as to his “cruelty” and “superstition,” leaving Cotton to 
the fore as the villain of the piece. Too many writers, however, 
have found it easiest to link father and son together, to accept the 
legend that Cotton was a worker of dark deeds, and, accordingly, 


b 


1. Acts and Resolves, vii, 9. 


288 INCREASE MATHER 


to tar his father with the same brush.? Aside from the fact that 
the two men differed in temperament, that even their literary 
styles were unlike, and that their points of view on many ques- 
tions were variously established, it would still be unjust to trans- 
fer Cotton’s fancied faults to Increase merely because the two 
-men stood in close blood relation. 

For our purpose, fortunately, we may leave Cotton quite out 
of account, except in so far as Increase was obviously his part- 
ner in opinions or acts. Similarly, we may confide to physician, 
psychologist, or student of religious survivals, the explanation of 
just what was behind the strange behavior of certain Salem 
Village children, whose accusations brought many people to jail, 
and twenty to execution. And, best of all, we need not try to 
discuss or answer the many judgments passed on this chapter 
of New England history by writers viewing it from a later stand- 
point, with eyes opened by generations of scientific advance, 
except in so far as such judgments are based on facts which could 
have influenced the actors in the tragedy. 

Very briefly, the story is that of a group of children in Salem 
Village, who, early in 1692, began to show signs of being tor- 
mented by agents of the devil. Their actions agreed with what 
was expected of victims of witchcraft, and their naming of their 
tormentors, and the popular excitement which ensued, led to the 
imprisonment of many citizens. These were charged with having 
entered into a contract with the devil, and with thus having 
secured power to molest others by the agency of infernal spirits. 
In May the disturbance was at its height. The jail was full. The 
ministers were alarmed by clear evidence that Satan was fighting 
for his erstwhile domain of New England, and had sent his emis- 
saries there in force. From the pulpits came pleas for the detec- 
tion and prosecution of the witches, and for popular reformation 
which alone could make the country inaccessible to diabolical 
attacks. The people, probably, were torn between rage against 
those they believed to have injured their neighbors’ children, 
fear of this great revelation of the devil’s might, and sympathy, 
growing as time went on, for those of good name who were drawn 
into the net. 

For the twentieth-century mind it is almost impossible to 
appreciate as clearly as one must to understand what happened 
at Salem Village, how it was possible for the best-educated men 


2. Cf., for example, A. D. White, 4 History of the Warfare, ii, 127. 


“DOLEFULL WITCHCRAFT” 289 


of the day to accept without cavil the belief that witches existed 
and had power to do such things as were thought to have been 
done in this latest outbreak of Satanic power. It is even harder 
for us to realize how any man of reason could for one moment 
agree to sentence to death any human being on the charge of 
being a witch. 

But the fact remains that, in England.and America alike, the 
belief in” “witches and witchcraft was general. Witchcraft was a 
crime me punishable by death, not only in the colonies but in Eng- 
land. There were, of course, a few sceptics. Bekker, in Holland, 
greatest of all, liter Porat areee, the delusion.‘ Bank in England, 
and Webster, had already argued against it with force. But, 
curiously enough, the basis of their pleas was hardly better 
founded in reason than that of the orthodox believers in witch- 
craft. The latter found in the Bible, in history, and in the 
phenomena of their own times evidence that witches were real, 
dangerous to men and to God’s rule. This evidence they had to 
interpret without our present medical and psychological theories, 
and their opponents too often could not explain the facts ob- 
served and recorded. Denial of their reality was the only method 
the sceptics could rely upon, and they, too, were often forced 
to argue chiefly from written authority.5 

Placed in the shoes of our predecessors in America, and faced 
with the conditions they found in 1692, what should we have 
done? The events agreed with what were commonly accepted as 
signs of witchcraft. Witchcraft was a crime. If we read the lead- 
ing scholarly writers in America or Europe, we should find an 
overwhelming mass of testimony as to the reality of witches and 
their ability to do evil. If we consulted the greatest lawyers, or 
the best written legal authorities, we should find clear rules for 
the examination and trial of witches. If we went to the Royal 
Society, working as it was by methods of scientific experiment, 
we should find that Robert Boyle ° had been, and his successors 
were, quite ready to accept certain phenomena as due to witch- 
craft. We should find students of current psychical research 


3. Cf. G. L. Kittredge, ““Notes on Witchcraft,” in American Antiquarian Society Pro- 
ceedings, xvill, 148 ff., and W. Notestein, 4 History of Witchcraft, p. 308. 

4. Balthazar Bekker’s “most telling attack upon the reality of witchcraft”’ was pub- 
lished in Dutch in 1691-1693, too late to have influenced the New England trials. The 
English translation appeared in 1695. Cf. Kittredge, “Notes,” pp. 180ff. 

5. Ibid., passim, and M. A. Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, p. 11. 

6. Cf. Notestein, 4 History, pp. 305, 306. Boyle died in 1691. 


290 INCREASE MATHER 


sifting the evidence by the best tests known at the time, and 
concluding that the existence of witches could be proved by 
observation.?. We should find among physicians no one to as- 
sert that disordered minds, hysteria, hypnotism, or any other 
“rational”’ explanation fitted the case; and in their libraries we 
should find books on witchcraft and the occult, just as there were 
volumes on fevers and remedies. The doctors would give “‘witch- 
craft” as their diagnosis. If, since it was a matter involving 
human life, and the controversy between God and Satan, we 
turned to the divines, we should find that they saw the affair 
as one in which unrighteousness and the powers of darkness had 
been given access by the unregenerate condition of mankind. 
Their answer would be that the laws of men must be obeyed in 
the interest of God, and the witches must be put to death. Here 
and there, among plain men of the world, not given either to his- 
torical or scientific reading, we might find a few scoffers, who 
would laugh at the idea that unearthly agents could cause human 
suffering, but they would be at a loss to give any authorities for 
their opinion. We might read Ady, or Scot, or Webster, but we 
should find only arguments no better founded, for the most part, 
than those of the English scholars, divines, judges, and philoso- 
phers, who drew their belief from human experience and from 
what their own eyes, or their friends’, had seen. 

If we were still sceptical, we should have to bear being sus- 
pected of disbelief in Christianity. We should be accused of 
rejecting the Bible. We should have to be content to align our- 
selves with a small minority of writers, and a minority made up 
of the least authoritative. And we should be constantly put to it 
to answer the facts adduced by Glanvill and More, who worked 
with scientific methods and, by the standards of the day, quite 
adequately proved the reality of witchcraft. To disbelieve would 
be to outlaw ourselves from the most authoritative school, to 
run counter to the accepted interpretation of the Bible, to link 
ourselves with a little-regarded group of radicals whose case 
rested on denial of what men of all ages believed they had seen 
and on an interpretation of Scripture rejected by the acknowl- 
edged masters in the use of such sources.2 Moreover, we should 


7. Cf., for example, H. S, Redgrove and I. M. L., Foseph Glanvill and Psychical Re- 
search, especially chaps. 5 and 6. : 

8. On all that precedes, a full and clear exposition with references to illustrative 
material is in Kittredge, ‘“‘Notes”; and one should see also Notestein, 4 History, chaps. 


“DOLEFULL WITCHCRAFT” 291 


have denied the existence of a crime for which in England, in the 
seventeenth century, more than a hundred persons had been 
executed, for which more than three thousand paid the penalty 
in Scotland, and one for which men were still haled before courts 
at home and abroad.? 

But, as human thought developed, we should have come 
eventually to be vindicated. The reality of witches was at last 
denied once and for all, but, be it noted, not on the grounds urged 
by the seventeenth-century sceptics. Their claim to be regarded 
to-day as enlightened pioneers among an ignorant and reaction- 
ary majority rests neither on the blindness of the majority nor 
on their own anticipation of later discoveries of science. All 
honor to such men as saw, however vaguely, the delusion that 
the world labored under in its belief in witchcraft, but let us not 
forget that they, in their day and generation, were not the think- 
ers best grounded in learning or law, and that their opponents 
reasoned as most of us reason to-day about our peculiar current 
problems. 

An analogy from later times is hard to draw. One remembers, 
of course, how long slavery was accepted as normal and right, « 


11 and 12. G. L. Burr (New Englana’s Place, pp. 211, 212), in answering the question 
where one should seek doubters of the current view of witchcraft, says: “I should not 
look chiefly among the theologians, or even among the jurists,” though “even among 
them doubters may be found.” “I should not look first among teachers, university or 
other....I would not look at all among the gossips or journalists....1 would look 
among the men of practical affairs, the men in touch with people and with facts; men of 
business, men of society, men of politics, men of travel, physicians, pastors. Yet, even 
among these, I should not listen first to those who talk — whether in books or outside 
them.” It seems as if, to follow such advice, a seeker for truth in Boston in 1692 would 
have had to overthrow most of the usual standards for seeking information on questions 
of law and religion; nor on such a question in our day would one be likely to go first to 
business men, men of society, politicians, or travellers. Physicians and pastors we 
should seek, but if Phipps had done so, he would not have found sceptics on witch- 
craft. One remembers that Thomas Oakes, an eminent doctor in Boston, believed in 
witches, and that the New England ministers did so, so far as we can prove, to a man. 
I find no record of any New England minister of the time who disbelieved in witchcraft. 
Upham (Salem Witchcraft, ii, 304, 305) says that John Wise was enlightened, but he 
signed the preface to Increase Mather’s Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits, 
and this work clearly upheld belief in witchcraft. J. Winsor, in The Literature of Wttch- 
craft, p. 363, speaks of Joshua Moodey as more enlightened than the Mathers, because he 
helped to hide one of the accused. But in 1688 he wrote to Increase Mather describing 
“4 very strange thing” which “we think... must needs bee” witchcraft. He was no 
disbeliever. See MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 367. As to Oakes, see Sibley, Biographical 
Sketches, ii, 131; and on Boston physicians in general, C. Mather, Magnalia, book VI, 
chap. 7, ‘Ninth Example.” 

g. Kittredge, “Notes,” pp. 203 and n., 204, 206ff.; Notestein, 4 History, pp. 418, 


419. 


292 INCREASE MATHER 


and how completely it 1s now repudiated. Or, one may imagine 
that in 2000 A.D. murder may be proved always to be the result 
of disease, and so cease to be a crime. Murderers in that en- 
lightened day may always be treated in hospitals, never tried or 
punished. Then those of us to-day who uphold our laws, who 
try to have murderers captured, and regard their conviction by 
juries as just, those lawyers who work in the interests of effective 
criminal procedure, those judges who do their duty as they see it, 
those ministers who preach against “crime waves,” and those 
doctors who believe human passions may lead to the taking of 
human life, will all appear to our progressive descendants as 
barbarous followers of a “delusion,” persecutors, exhorters to 
cruelty, and scientific dullards. Only the rare person in our 
generation who sees the death penalty as always wrong, or who 
believes imprisonment for life never justified, or who upholds 
the murderer’s right to murder unrestrained by any law, will 
seem to posterity enlightened. They alone will be revered; and 
revered they will be, even though the reasons for their views 
are not those considered sound in the year 2000. The rest of us 
will be seen as backward victims of a cruel superstition. 

Neither Phipps, then, hard-headed seaman that he was, nor 
Increase Mather, student of theology, amateur in science, and 
scholar of wide interests; not Thomas Oakes, physician, or any 
other recognized leader in the New England pulpit, college, 
politics, or business; not the lords of William’s court, or his judges; 
not the scientists Boyle, More, or Glanvill; not that sceptical 
student of superstition, Thomas Browne; not the great divine, 
Richard Baxter, or any other save some radical challenger of 

‘received doctrine,’ could see anything in the state of affairs at 
Salem Village in 1692, which called for anything more than a legal 
trial of the accused “‘witches” for a capital crime. In pursuance 
of what he cannot have seen otherwise than as a duty, Phipps 
promptly established a court to try the prisoners." This body, 
headed by Lieutenant Governor Stoughton, set to work, and 
promptly found a certain Bridget Bishop guilty of witchcraft. 
She was hanged. 

It is worth remembering, perhaps, that on the court sat not 





10. Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial, ii, 242; Cal. State Papers, Am. and W. 1., xiv., 
¥ 33; Notestein, 4 History, pp. 418ff.; Kittredge, “Notes,” pp. 157, 158; Winsor, 
The Literature of Witchcraft, pp. 356, 357. 

11. Palfrey, iv, 105. 


*DOLEFULL WITCHCRAFT” 293 


only Stoughton, whom we like to call “bigoted,” but Samuel 
Sewall, whose diary reveals to us a man hard to crowd within the’ 
limits of the conventional idea of Puritan pedantry, and one: 
whose later attitude toward his share in the witch trials still wins. 
praise; and not only men who can be called disciples of the 
Mathers, but other eminent citizens who were by no means 
solely dependent upon the favor of the two divines.” 

After their first sentence, the court, though supported in their 
procedure by English precedents, showed a creditable interest 
in informing themselves as to the propriety of their course. Thus 
they sought the advice of the clergy. They were not content to 
leave it solely to their own church, but sought counsel from cer- 
tain French and Dutch ministers, and even from a Church of 
England divine, serving as a chaplain in New York.** His answer 
was in no way more “advanced”’ than that of his French and 
Dutch colleagues,“ nor was theirs a whit more “enlightened”’ 
than the reply of their Puritan brethren in Massachusetts. 

Before considering the advice of the ministers, one must remind 
one’s self of a legal question involved in the trials. The persons 
alleged to be the victims of witches often declared that they were 
attacked by spirits appearing to them in the likeness of this or 
that resident of the colony. Was this sufficient evidence to con- 
vict as a witch the person whose shape was taken by the fiend? 
Obviously, if it was, it was easy to bring to the gallows anyone 
against whom those “afflicted” by witchcraft chose to speak. 
On the other hand, if such “spectral evidence”’ were thrown out, 
or refused as the sole basis for conviction and considered of value 
only in a preliminary investigation, it was necessary, in order to 
prove a witch guilty, to show that he or she had revealed in some 
other fashion such supernatural powers as could be derived only 
from Satan. Such proof would be harder to find than an “af- 
flicted”’ child ready to accuse a neighbor. Obviously, on the 


12. The court was made up of William Stoughton, John Richards, Nathaniel Sal- 
tonstall, Wait Winthrop, Bartholomew Gedney, Samuel Sewall, John Hathorne, Jona- 
than Corwin, and Peter Sergeant, according to the records of Phipps’s Council for May 
27, 1692. See note by W. F. Poole, in his edition of T. Hutchinson, The Witchcraft 
Delusion of 1692, p. 32n. Of these men only Corwin and Sergeant were not office- 
holders in the colony before Mather’s selection of them under the new charter. Corwin 
was from Salem. Sergeant was of Boston, but not a member of Mather’s church. 

13. O. Manning and W. Bray (The History and Antiquities of the County of Surrey, 
li, 714 n.) refer to this. See MHS Proc., xxi, 348ff. 

14. Manning and Bray, The History, ii, 714 n. For the answer of the foreign 
ministers, see MHS Proc., xxi, 349ff. 


294. INCREASE MATHER 


weight given to “spectral evidence” depended the lives of many 
of the accused.*® 

Increase Mather joined the signers of the ministers’ answer, 
and it is, therefore, our first clue as to his attitude toward the 
-witchcraft excitement. The document is entirely clear. Like all 
good citizens in orderly commonwealths, its authors believed 

that the law should be enforced and the courts upheld. It praises 
the energy of the judges, but does not go into the question 
whether the evidence they had used thus far was sound or not. 
It urges the continuance of the fight against the devil’s wiles. 
On the other hand, it denounces putting upon “spectral evidence” 
more weight than it will bear. It begs that ‘“‘a very critical and 
exquisite caution” be used, and that there be followed “the 
directions given by such Judicious writers as Perkins and 
Barnard.” * The ministers were not content with the common 
‘practice of English courts.7 They objected to making mere 
“spectral evidence” the basis of convictions. They believed the 
devil could, at times, assume the shape of an innocent person, 
so that the appearance of a spectre in the likeness of a man was 
‘not in itself proof that the person represented was a witch. They 
did not, however, refuse to approve the admission of such evi- 
dence. It might serve to hold an accused person for further exami- 
nation, and it might have consideration as corroborating other 
less dubious witnesses. Later criticism has sometimes wandered 
from the point, in debating whether or not the ministers opposed 
the “admission” of “spectral evidence.” This they never con- 
sidered. Their concern was with its use as evidence for con- 
viction. To admit it to corroborate other testimony, or to hold 
a man for investigation, was entirely safe. More confusion has 
arisen from some historians’ zeal to show the Puritans as bigoted 
as tradition declares them to have been, for their advice to the 
court has been twisted into a half-hearted warning against 
“spectral evidence” coupled with a vigorous and blood-thirsty 

15. Cf. Kittredge, “Notes,” pp. 197ff., 199 (note 165). 

16. For William Perkins, see Notestein, 4 History, pp. 227ff. On his cautious views 
as to evidence, see especially, [éid., pp. 228, 229. On Richard Bernard (Barnard) and 
his Guide to Grand-Furymen ...in cases of Witchcraft, see Ibid., pp. 234f., especially 
p- 236: ““The main aim of his discourse was, indeed, to warn judges and jurors to be 
very careful by their questions and methods of inquiring to separate the innocent from 
the guilty... . In his whole attitude, he was very nearly the mouthpiece of an age which, 
while clinging to a belief, was becoming increasingly cautious of carrying that belief 


too far into judicial trial and punishment.” 
17. Kittredge, “Notes,” pp. 197, 198. 


“DOLEFULL WITCHCRAFT” 295 


exhortation to continue sentencing the accused.'® Read in the 
light of what is recorded again and again as to the ministerial 
point of view on “spectral evidence,” the document of June 15, 
1692, can be seen only as sound advice, including an appreciation 
of the conscientiousness of the judges, still undoubted by anyone, 
and a plea that they would continue with “exquisite caution” 
to put down an outbreak of crime. Such counsel was not only 
in the direction of safeguarding the innocent, but, for its day, 
liberal and advanced. 

If the witchcraft delusion were, as later generations have some- 
times beeri assured, fostered by the ministers to serve their own 
ends, and to glut their barbarous ambition to exalt their sect at 
whatever expense in human life, the answer of the clergy in 1692 
would be hard to explain. But, remembering that the belief in 
witchcraft was too general to need fostering by anyone, that 
there is no proof that the New England divines tried to spread 
its influence or magnify its results, and that no end of theirs 
could have been served had they done so, their declaration still 
has meaning for us. It is an exact record, showing that the Puri- 
tan i Boston took a more humane position than the courts of 
King William III, in regard to methods of trying for witchcraft. 
However liberal England may have been, and however fanati- 
cally blind was the colony, on this one issue the Massachusetts 
minister dealt more mercifully than the judges in the courts 
across the sea. 

In Winthrop’s day, the advice of the ministers, right or wrong, 


18. Upham says (Salem Witchcraft, ii, 268): ‘“The reverend gentlemen, while urg- 
ing, in general terms, the importance of caution and circumspection in the methods of 
examination, decidedly and earnestly recommended that the proceedings should be 
vigorously carried on.” Again, in his Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather, pp. 21ff., he 
returns to the matter, but quite neglects the fact that the ministers did certainly urge 
caution, did wish prosecutions according to the laws of God and England, and that para- 
graph 2 of the answer refers, not to the execution, but to the ‘“‘discovery” and investi- 
gation of witches. 

J.T. Adams (The Founding, p. 455) says the ministers urged “speedy and vigorous 
prosecution,” while “carefully hedging as to certain particulars.” Sections 4, 5, and 6 
of their reply, printed in Appendix B, do not seem to me to be “‘hedging,” being per- 
fectly explicit as to their views. 

Neither Mr. Adams nor Mr. Upham remarks that the ministers urged the carrying 
on of the prosecutions only “according to the Direction given in the Laws of God, and 
the wholesome Statutes of the English Nation, for the Detection of Witchcrafts.” In 
other words, they did just what most good citizens, divines or not, would do to-day — 
urged the prosecution of criminals, but prosecution according to the most humane legal 
practice of the time. 

The much-misread answer of the ministers is given in full in Appendix B, pp. 405, 406. 


296 INCREASE MATHER 
would probably have been heeded. But William Stoughton held 


the view that the devil could never personate the innocent.'? 
He was acting under a commission from Governor Phipps, not 
Minister Mather,— whose tool, we remember, he was called,??— 
and his court, throughout the summer, tried witches in opposi- 
tion to the counsels of the brethren. Before September 2, nine- 
teen persons were hanged, and one, in accordance with the old 
English criminal law, was pressed to death for refusing to plead." 
It is hard to wipe away from our minds the impression of bar- 
barity left by the bare relation of these executions. Yet Samuel 
Sewall, repentant as he became in later years, kept his diary in 
1692 with no record of any revulsion of feeling caused by the 
bloody work in which he shared. Nor do we find any other good 
citizen of Massachusetts stirred to accuse the judges of wilful 
cruelty or cold-blooded persecution. John Evelyn, no Puritan 
and no fool, saw nothing to be distressed about in the affair, 
except in so far as he, Sewall, and everyone else were aghast at 
the extent of this most recent “crime wave.” ” Evil-doing was 
rampant, and the government was bringing the guilty to ac- 
count. More could not be asked by any citizen with a respect 
for law. 

There were, however, a few men who did honor to the com- 
munity by objecting to what was done at Salem, not because 
the crime was a fancied one, but because they, like the minis- 
ters, distrusted the legal methods employed. They agreed with 
Increase Mather in thinking that “spectral evidence” was not 
enough to convict a witch. So thought Nathaniel Saltonstall, 
again one of the “weak fanatics” Mather chose to office; and he 
refused to sit longer on the court because he disliked its methods. 
So also Samuel Willard had the courage to write and publish a 
little tract questioning the use of “spectral evidence.” ** And 
Thomas Brattle set forth in trenchant terms his opposition to 
some of the evidence accepted by the judges.?s It has been said 
that in so doing he implied scepticism as to the reality of the 


19. T. Hutchinson, History, ii, 23, 24; MHS Coll., Series 1, v, 74. 

20. Cf. p. 252, note 17, ante. 

21. Hutchinson, ti, §9; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, ti, 338, 339- 

22. Evelyn, Diary, Feb. 4, 1692-93; and cf. Kittredge, “Notes,” pp. 162, 163 and n. 

23. Upham, Salem Witchcraft, ii, 251; MHS Coll., Series 1, v, 75. 

24. Memorial History of Boston, ii, 164. A reprint is in Congregational Quarterly 
(1869), xi, 400ff. 

25. MHS Coll., Series 1, v, 61ff. 











WILLIAM STOUGHTON 





“DOLEFULL WITCHCRAFT” 297 


certain that he did give, together with his statement of his own 
attitude, invaluable evidence as to what the most enlightened 
New Englanders believed. 

The letter in which he expressed his opinions takes pains to 
mention several men who were dissatisfied with what the court 
had done. Saltonstall and Willard are thus named, Bradstreet, 
Danforth, and Increase Mather.?? Here is contemporary evidence 
of the best that the elder Mather held to what he had signed in 
the ministers’ reply of June 15, and that he disapproved the 
methods of the court. Yet neither he, Saltonstall, Willard, 
Brattle, nor any one of the objectors spoke out against the execu- 
tions. Brattle’s letter was to a friend, not for publication, and. 
was not printed until 1798.7* So, if Mather be blamed, as he some- | 
times has been, for his “delay” in protesting against the “perse- 


. > ° . e 4 
cution”’ of the witches,” we must number with him those men t 


% 


most praised for their humanity, who kept quite as silent as he. 
And for the same reasons, no doubt. They knew, as he did, that 
the judges did what they saw as their duty, and followed accepted 
legal standards. Willard, Mather, and other divines, in June, 
protested against their methods, and then, being but private 
citizens, interfered no more with a constituted court of justice. 
In any other matter, had they done more, they would have been 
denounced for trying to restore theocracy by bringing their 
influence to bear in a case concerned only with the enforcement of 


26. J. A. Doyle, The Puritan Colonies, ii, 393f. 

27. MHS Coll., Series 1, v, 75. 

28. I[bid., v,61. Doyle (Lhe Puritan Colonies, ii, 393) says: “The honour of being the 
first to speak out fearlessly and to brave a mob, cruel with the cruelty of panic,” belongs 
to Brattle. But Brattle did not “‘speak out publicly,” but simply wrote a private letter 
to a friend, whereas Increase Mather’s Cases of Conscience, questioning some of the 
evidence used by the court, was finished and read at a meeting of ministers five days 
before Brattle wrote. 

Neither Mather nor Brattle believed it wise publicly to attack the conduct of the 
judges. The latter writes: “When errors of that nature are thus detected and observed, 
I never thought it an interfering with dutifulness and subjection for one man to com- 
municate his thoughts to another thereabout; and with modesty and due reverence to 
debate the premised failings; at least when errors are fundamental, and palpably per- 
vert the great end of authority and government.” MHS Coll., Series 1, v, 61, 62. 

29. Cf. G. H. Moore, “Bibliographical Notes on Witchcraft in Massachusetts,” in 
American Antiquarian Society Proceedings, v, 265, 266, who says that Increase Mather 
made no effort to stop the trials, and approved twenty executions before he was heard 
from. This leaves out of account his signing the answer of the ministers in June, does 
not explain why Brattle regarded him in October as one who had opposed the court’s 
doings, and neglects the fact that Mather never, during the summer, specifically “ap- 
proved” a single execution. 


¢ 
s 


crime of witchcraft.%* This is not susceptible of proof, but it is,/ 


f 


7 


298 INCREASE MATHER 


the laws of the state. As it is, they cannot be accused of officious 
meddling in government, and attacks shift to make them into 
inhumane upholders of superstition. So they seem to-day; but 
in their time, and for a generation thereafter, they appeared 
simply as would-be servants and teachers of their congregations, 
urging the most liberal attitude in witch trials, but not carrying 
their activity beyond the scope allowed them by the popular 
view, which still persists, of the place of the minister in public 
affairs. 

Brattle’s letter, with its unshakable testimony as to Mather’s 
position, was written October 8, 1692. He not only tells us that 
Mather. disliked the way the court proceeded, but tells how a 
certain Bostonian went to see one of the “‘afflicted”’ in Salem for 
advice as to strange symptoms observed in his own child. Thus 
he got “spectral evidence” against an individual, and attempted 
to secure a warrant for his arrest. This was denied him, and 
Increase Mather “‘took occasion severely to reprove the said 
man; asking him whether there was not a God in Boston, that 
he should go to the devil in Salem for advice; warning him very 
seriously against such naughty practices.” 3° Mather appears in 
this incident as a man interested neither in upholding “spectral 
evidence”’ nor in keeping the witchcraft excitement alive. 

Further testimony as to Mather’s feeling during the summer of 
1692 is afforded by a letter of John Proctor and others, protest- 
ing against the sentence imposed by the court, for it was addressed 
to several ministers, and Mather’s name heads the list. Mr. 
Upham infers, reasonably, that this points to its having been 
known that the Teacher of the Second Church was doubtful as to 
the means by which the court arrived at convictions." We know, 
too, that in all the fever of excitement about the trials, Mather 
not only kept silence, refraining from writing or saying anything 
that might fan the blaze, but also never went to Salem, even as a 
spectator, except on one occasion. “Then George Burroughs, a 
fellow minister, was on trial, and his colleague came to hear the 

30. MHS Coll., Series 1, v, 71. 

31. Upham, Salem Witchcraft, ii, 310-312, 308, 309. 

32. I. Mather, Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits,” p. 286: “I was not my- 
self present at any of the Tryals, excepting one, viz. that of George Burroughs.” If this 
refers only to the few trials written of by Cotton Mather, the fact remains that we have 
no record of Increase’s presence in Salem Village during the summer of 1692, in Sewall’s 
Diary, or elsewhere, so far as I have been able to discover. Mather did go to Salem 


on October 19, after the trials were over, to visit the confessors. See MHS Coll., Series 
2, ill, 221. 


“DOLEFULL WITCHCRAFT” 299 


evidence. In this case there was produced what seemed to 
Mather, as to the judges, clear evidence that Burroughs had used 
supernatural powers, so that his conviction was based by no 
means solely upon “spectral evidence.” 33 Mather, therefore, 
found nothing to criticize in the conduct of the trial, and Bur- 
roughs’s declaration of his own innocence, appealing as it seems 
to us, who judge on evidence then unknown, was no more striking 
to those who heard it, than are similar protestations from more 
than one legally condemned criminal of the present. 

On October 3, the Cambridge Association of ministers met, and 
to them was read “‘a manuscript of cases of conscience relating to 
witchcraft, composed by the President of the College, the epistle 
commendatory whereunto was then signed by the’’ ministers at 
the meeting.*4 The “epistle commendatory,” written by Willard, 
makes it plain that Mather, in accordance with the wishes of the 
Association, drew up a full statement of the ministers’ position in 
regard to witch trials. It was intended as no shifting of ground, 
but simply as a fuller exposition of what had already been said by 
the clergy in June. 

Printed promptly, Increase Mather’s “Cases of Conscience” 
gives, as definitely as one can ask, his views and his brethren’s.3° — 


33. Hutchinson, History, ii, 56, 57; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, ii, 296-304. The 
latter gives the facts of the trial, but some of the interpretations and inferences seem 
unsound, 

34. MHS Proc., xvii, 268. 

35. I. Mather, Cases of Conscience, pp. 289-291. 

36. The full title is (from the London edition): “Cases of Conscience Concerning 
Evil Spirits Personating Men; Witchcrafts, Infallible Proofs of Guilt in such as are 
Accused with that Crime. All Considered according to the Scriptures, History, Ex- 
perience, and the Judgment of many Learned Men.... Printed at Boston, and Re- 
‘printed at London, for John Dunton, at the Raven in the Poultrey. 1693.” There was an 
_ edition in Boston in 1693. The London edition also appeared as the second part of a 
book, with the title, “A Further Account of the Tryals of the New-England Witches. 
With The Observations Of a Person who was upon the Place several Days when the 
suspected Witches were first taken into Examination. To which is added, Cases of 
Conscience Concerning Witchcrafts and Evil Spirits Personating Men. Written at 
the Request of the Ministers of New-England. By Increase Mather, President of Har- 
vard Colledge. Licensed and Entred according to Order. London... . 1693.” 

This contains, first, ““A True Narrative of some Remarkable Passages relating to 
... Witchcraft at Salem Village in New-England,” ‘Collected by Deodat Lawson.” 
This is followed by “A Further Account of the Tryals of The... Witches, Sent in a 
Letter from Thence, to a Gentleman in London.” Then comes, as a separate part of 
the volume, Increase Mather’s “‘Cases of Conscience.” 

The whole book has been often credited to Increase Mather, under the title of ““A 
Further Account,” etc., but it seems to me that only the ‘‘Cases of Conscience” can 
be called his. The first section was avowedly by Deodat Lawson, and the second, the 
letter, offers no proof that Mather wrote it. It begins, moreover, ‘Here were in Salem,” 


a ee 


300 INCREASE MATHER 


It was the first publicly printed discussion of the methods of the 
witch court, with the possible exception of Willard’s pamphlet, 
dated in 1692, which appeared in Philadelphia. Mather finished 
his work, and it was read to his colleagues, five days before 
Brattle wrote his letter. In other words, no one anticipated his 


protest unless Willard’s little dialogue antedated it. The position 


of the “Cases of Conscience” in the history of the expression of 


opinion on New England witchcraft entitles it, therefore, to a 
detailed examination. 


It begins with the question, “‘Whether it is not Possible for 
the Devil to impose on the imagination of Persons Bewitched, 
and to cause them to Believe that an Innocent, yea that a Pious 
person does torment them, when the Devil himself doth it; or 
whether Satan may not appear in the Shape of an Innocent and 
Pious, as well of a Nocent and Wicked Person to Afflict such as 
suffer by Diabolical Molestations?” And we are told at once: 
“The Answer to the Question must be Affirmative” (p. 225). No 
more explicit denial of the validity of “spectral evidence” can be 
framed. Mather’s views, shared by the Salem judges, would have 
altered the whole course of the trials. 

His main point decisively made, Mather goes on to support 
it by authorities. But here, as in the “Illustrious Providences,”’ 
authority alone could not serve. “Our own Experience hath 
confirmed the Truth of what we affirm,”’ Mather writes (p. 253), 
and proceeds to argue from the experience of Bostonians of his 


' own and earlier generations.” “Spectral evidence”’ is thoroughl 
g Pp gniy 


repudiated. The Scriptures, the writings of scholars, and the 


observations of New Englanders, all prove that the Devil can 


disguise his agents in the shapes of the innocent. 


Mather continues, taking up a second question of importance 
in relation to the trials. “If one bewitched is struck down at the 
Look or cast of the Eye of another, and after that recovered 
again by a Touch from the same Person, Is not this an infallible 
Proof, that the Person suspected and complained of is in League 
with the Devil? ” (p. 255). The answer is once more based on 


suggesting that a resident of Salem, not of Boston, was the author. Probably Increase 
Mather’s connection with the volume included under the title of ‘‘A Further Account,” 
etc., was that of a compiler, and even this much instrumentality cannot be proved. 
It is quite possible that the passage by Lawson and the letter were put together by the 
publisher. 

The Cases of Conscience was reprinted in an edition of C. Mather: The Wonders of 
the Invisible World, London, 1862. To this edition all references here are made. 


“DOLEFULL WITCHCRAFT” 301 


the opinions of learned authors, among them, be it noted, John 
Webster himself (p. 255 n.). The experience of recent investi- 
gators in English trials is also adduced. The final answer is clear. 
Testing witches by the methods discussed “‘is an unwarrantable 
mractice” (p. 269). 

Mather, having cut the ground from under the advocates of 
two common proofs of witches’ guilt, turns now to the query, 
“Whether there are any Discoveries of this Crime, which Jurors 
and Judges may with a safe Conscience proceed upon to the Con- 
viction and Condemnation of the Persons under Suspicion? ” 
He premises, first, that “The Evidence in this Crime ought to be 
as clear as in any other Crimes of a Capital nature,” and, second, 
that “there have been ways of trying Witches long used in many 
Nations ... which the righteous God never approved of.” He 
denounces some superstitious “witch tests” used in “a Neighbor 
Colony.” He argues against “ducking,” together with other such 
popular measures, as contrary to Scripture, redolent of Paganism 
and the Devil, and as proved fallible by experience. But, leaving 
aside such unsound tests, “there are Proofs for the Conviction of 
Witches which Jurors may with a safe Conscience proceed upon, 
so as to bring them in guilty.” These proofs are, first, ““A free 
and voluntary Confession of the Crime made by the person sus- 
pected and accused,” and second, the sworn statement of ‘‘two 
credible Persons . . . that they have seen the . . . accused speaking 
such words, or doing things which none but such as have Familiar- 
ity with the Devil ever did or can do.” Testimony of one witch 
against another is not reliable, and its acceptance has caused 
the shedding of innocent blood. Only the two proofs cited are 
sufficient to convict.37 

The book ends with a quotation from Perkins, urging no con- 
victions without adequate proof (p. 283). It is impossible to read 
the “Cases of Conscience” as anything but a thoroughly docu- 
mented answer to certain questions raised by the witch trials, 
and an answer insisting upon a caution which, had it been used 
in the summer of 1692, would have prevented much bloodshed. 

To his book Mather added a Postscript. It has been con- 
jectured that this was appended after the ministers’ approval was 
secured,’* but there is no evidence that, even if this was done, 

37- Pp. 269, 270, 275, 276, 2709ff., 282. 


38. Cf. I. Mather, Early History of New England, etc. (a reprint of an early work of 
Mather’s, given a new title by the editor, S. G. Drake, Boston, 1864), pp. xxii, xxiii, Mr. 


302 INCREASE MATHER 


the brethren failed to approve it. No one of them protested 
when it appeared in a book commended by them. In it Mather 
explains that he has written, not “to plead for Witchcrafts, or 
to appear as an Advocate for Witches.’ He has, he declares, 
written a discourse to prove that witches exist, but has not pub- 
lished it, although in “‘due time” he may do so (p. 285). He has 
not “‘designed any Reflection on those worthy Persons who have 
been concerned in the late Proceedings at Salem; They are wise 
and good Men, and have acted with all Fidelity according to 
their Light... . Pitty and Prayers rather than Censures are their 
due” (pp. 285ff.). Less could hardly be said in fairness. More 
approval of the trials Mather never expressed. 

He then mentions Cotton’s account of some of the doings of 
the court, condemns once more some of the popular tests for 
witchcraft, and, finally, writes of his son’s book. “I perused 
and approved of”’ it “before it was printed; and nothing but 
my Relation to him hindred me from recommending it to the 
World” (p. 288). Such approval was entirely reasonable. Cotton 
Mather had argued that there were witches, had praised the 
faithfulness of the Judges, and had given an account of some of 
the trials drawn from the records of the court. To this he added 
an unqualified disapproval of convictions based on the sort of 
evidence his fellow divines and his father denounced.3® However 
they differed in their conduct during the excitement, Increase 
and Cotton shared certain fundamental beliefs; and the father’s 
endorsement of the son’s writings marks no more than his wel- 
coming of one more statement of the position of the more liberal 
critics of the witch court. 

The “Cases of Conscience”’ stands alone in its careful exposure 
_ of the most dangerous fallacies in the legal process by which the 
witches died.4° It is far more explicit than Willard’s pamphlet 


Drake says here: ‘‘Perhaps the Fourteen [signers of the preface] did not include the 
Postscript in their Commendation. Indeed it is quite probable they knew Nothing of 
it until after the Book was printed.... The Postscript ... did not probably appear in 
the original Edition of the Cases of Conscience. I have a manuscript copy of it (chiefly 
in the Autograph of the Author) to which there is no Postscript.” The absence of the 
postscript from the manuscript as it reached Mr. Drake proves nothing, of course, and 
I know of no edition from which the Postscript can be proved to have been lacking 
originally. Moreover, as noted in the text, no one of the signers of the preface seems to 
have protested against the Postscript when it appeared as part of the book they had 
commended. 

39. Memorial History of Boston, i1, 160, 161, 162. 

40. Lbid., 162. 


“DOLEFULL WITCHCRAFT” 303 


on the same subject. It expressed the views of the foremost 
ministers, and it remains, for us, a landmark. With it at hand, 
there can be no doubt as to Mather’s stand; seen in its pages, 


he must always be the intelligent critic who found the Bible, . 


scholars, and human observation all in opposition to the court’s 
methods. That he had courage to speak his views was much; 


that he wrote, “It were better that ten suspected Witches should. 
escape, than that one innocent Person should be Condemned... . 


It is better that a Guilty Person should be absolved, than that he 
should without sufficient ground of Conviction be condemned. I 


<a 


had rather judge a Witch to be an honest woman, than judge an - 
honest woman as Witch’? (p. 283), proves him to have beenh 


mindful of humanity and caution in the face of a popular frenzy. 
No zeal to stamp out crimes ever drove him from his belief that, 
whatever the fate of the guilty, the innocent must never be in 
peril. 

By autumn, whether because of this book, the unanimity of 
the ministers, or a real dawning of light in Massachusetts minds, 
the opposition to the court’s ways made itself heard. Stoughton, 
undeterred by a letter Mather had received from England de- 
nouncing “‘spectral evidence,” uninfluenced by Brattle, Willard, 
Mather, Danforth, or any of the protesting clergy, persisted in 
his views of evidence. Sewall significantly remarks that so 
great was the difference of opinion between the court and the 
ministers that the proceedings were halted.* The General Court 
had now voted to establish a Supreme Court, so that the tem- 
porary witch tribunal was automatically dissolved.4* Judges for 
the new court were elected on December 7. Lest one fancy that 
popular feeling was in advance of the ministers’, it is worth while 
to note that of all the new judges, Stoughton received most 
votes.46 Danforth, who shared Mather’s cautious views, came 
next, then John Richards who had also been on the former court, 
Winthrop, and Samuel Sewall. In other words, of those elected, 
four were among those who had tried and sentenced the witches, 
and there was included Stoughton, the man most opposed to 
the ministerial view. Only one of the new appointees was among 

41. Cf. Parentator, p. 166. 

42. Hutchinson, History, ii, 23 n. and 61; Cal. State Papers, dm. and W. I., xiv, 


% 112 (p. 30). 
43. MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 367. 
44. Ibid., 367, 368; Palfrey, iv, 111. 
45. MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 370. 


ee apt 


304 INCREASE MATHER 


those Brattle named as having questioned the proceedings of the 
summer. 

The court did not meet at Salem until January, 1693. In the 
meanwhile the ministers’ views had a chance to do their work, 
and the bringing of charges against some persons in high place 
and of unquestioned reputation, coupled with the time the people 
now had in which to think over more soberly what had been done, 
led to a decided change in feeling.**”*Governor Phipps was enough 
of a politician to detect it, and put himself on the side of the 
opponents of the trials. In so doing he gave as one of his reasons 
the advice he had received from Increase Mather and the other 
divines.47 Thus, when the court met in January, all but three 
out of fifty were acquitted, and those three won pardons from 
Phipps.*® 

In England witchcraft trials continued well into the eighteenth 
century, and in Scotland bloody chapters in the history of witch- 
craft were still to be written.49 But New England never again 
brought a witch to trial, and the “delusion,” so far as it im- 
prisoned human beings, brought them to trial, or to the gallows, 
was dead on her shores. Its tragic outbreak in.1692;-however 
gruesome as a page in human history,.was by no means so dread- 
ful as similar occurrences in equally limited districts in older 
civilizations not under Puritan or ‘clerical’? dominion.s°/ 

We have seen the facts in regard to Increase Mather’s con- 
nection with the affair. They give no basis for the somewhat 
reckless ascription of motives which led to many eighteenth- and 
nineteenth-century accusations of him as one who fostered the 
“delusion,” or, at least, delayed inexcusably in opposing its 
excesses. The facts refute such charges. They show that Mather 
was three thousand miles away from the scene of the tragedy 
until May, 1692; that, after the first execution, he publicly urged 
caution in the use of evidence; that he did not attend the trials; 
that he cautioned a parishioner against spreading the excite- 
ment; that he made plain to Brattle his discontent with what was 
done; that he was chosen to write the full statement of the 
ministers’ position; that the book which resulted was the first 


46. Hutchinson, History, ii, 60. 
47. Cf. Cal. State Papers, Am. and W.I.,xiv, % 112 (p. 30); and MHS Proc., xxi, 340, 


48. Hutchinson, History, ii, 60; Doyle, The Puritan Colonies, ii, 395. 
49. Kittredge, “ Notes,” pp. 202ff. 
50. Lbid., pp. 205ff. 


“DOLEFULL WITCHCRAFT” 305 


detailed argument against the procedure of the trials; and that, 
after it was printed, no witch was executed in Massachusetts. 
We know that Phipps, claiming credit for stopping the bloodshed, 


named Mather as one of those who advised the course he chose. “ 


And we know that Increase wrote and published a sentence which 
does not deserve to be forgotten when his reputation is at stake: 
“It is better that a Guilty Person should be absolved, than that 


he should without sufficient ground of Conviction be condemned.” 


But instead of finding him held up as a leader of the enlightened 
thought of his time, we have John Wise, Brattle, Pike, Moodey, 
Hale, and Willard singled out for praise.* Now Brattle, however 
worthy of honor, knew that Mather was liberally minded, and 
said so. As for Wise, his only public expression in the affair was 
his endorsement of what Mather wrote. Willard, too, joined 
in commending the “‘Cases of Conscience,” and himself criticized 
the court. But, it is well to remember that neither he nor Moodey 
doubted the reality of witchcraft, for both had studied and 
written about cases of diabolical possession. Pike, advanced 
as were his views, went no further than Mather. Hale wrote 
nothing till five years after the event, and then was still interested 
in discovering witches who deserved punishment. Wherever such 
men as these have a place as clear-sighted thinkers in a time of 


51. Upham, Salem Witchcraft, ii, 304, 305; Doyle, The Puritan Colonies, ii, 393; 
Winsor, The Literature of Witchcraft, p. 363; and J. Quincy, H istory, 1,147,148. As for 
Hale, Upham (Salem Witchcraft, ii, 475) speaks of his “rational view.” In 1697 he 
wrote an expression of this view in 4 Modest Enquiry Into the Nature of Witchcraft, 
Boston, 1702. (The preface is dated 1697.) This is reprinted in part in G. L. Burr, 
Narratives, pp. 395ff. Hale, as Mather had done five years before, questions the method 
used in the trials, citing Mather as one authority, and urges repentance for the errors 
committed. He regrets that it is necessary to fear “that there hath been a great deal 
of innocent blood shed,” but also, “that there have been great sinful neglects in sparing 
others, who by their divinings about things future, or discovering things secret, as 
stollen Goods, Sc or by their informing of persons and things absent at a great distance, 
have implored the assistance of a familiar spirit,” etc. He is concerned, not with deny- 
ing witchcraft, but deciding who are witches, and feels that the Salem prosecution chose 
the wrong ones, leaving others deserving conviction! Such “rational views” do not 
compare favorably with Mather’s. 

52. Wise signed the commendatory preface to the Cases of Conscience, and, so 
far as we know, published nothing of his own on the subject. 

53. MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 555, 360, 361, 367ff. 

54. See J. S. Pike, The New Puritan, chap. 23. John Pike wrote a letter on August 9, 
1692, in which he asserts his belief that there are witches, and recommends the same 
tests for guilt which were held by Mather to be the only reliable ones. Creditable as his 
view was to him, it was exactly Mather’s; in view of which one wonders why Upham, 
in Salem Witchcraft, devotes so much space (ii, 449ff.) to praise of Pike and so little 
to commendation of Mather. 


a 


- 


“Fr 


306 INCREASE MATHER 


“delusion,” Mather must join them, not as the blind tyrant from 
/ whose influence they had emancipated themselves,*> but as the 
* leader they publicly owned. 

There are, however, one or two accusations brought against 
Increase Mather, which purport to have foundation in the 
recorded facts of his time. Perhaps it is necessary to say no more 
in answer to attacks of later generations, than that they are 
attacks of later generations and not those of Brattle and the men 
who knew Mather and his deeds. But his position among his 
contemporaries is important for any biography, and a glance 
at some of the charges brought against him may not be without 
use. 

First, then, we are told that his “Illustrious Providences,” 
published, one remembers, eight years before 1692, is shown by 
evidence from the Mathers’ own time to have been largely re- 
sponsible for the “delusion” centring about Salem Village.® 
This statement has been made again and again since Francis 
Hutchinson first gave grounds for it in his invaluable essay on 
witchcraft. But he said no more than that the Mathers’ books 
prepared men’s minds to become prey to the “delusion” of 
1692.57 Of course, all such statements are dangerous. To say 
to-day that moving pictures excite youth to crime, or that this or 
that book establishes false beliefs, is common, but in every case 

“such statements, perforce, remain unproved. There is no harm 
in thinking that Increase Mather, who wrote of events which he 


55. Winsor (The Literature of Witchcraft, p. 363) says: “There lived at the time o 
the Mathers some who were not enslaved by their influence,” and that this “shows that 
society could have been saved, but for such misguided leaders. Such was Joshua 
Moody, who spirited away to a place of safety the accused Philip English and his wife. 
... Such was the outspoken Robert Pike.” But Moodey wrote Mather to tell him of a 
witchcraft case, and we know he furnished for Mather’s [//ustrious Providences (which 
Mr. Winsor considers to have been instrumental in causing the outbreak of 1692) at 
least one narrative. Cf. note 53, ante. Whether or not they emancipated themselves 
from Mather’s influence, Pike and Moodey shared his views, and never wrote, as he 
did, to make their liberal attitude public. 

56. Cf. Winsor, The Literature of Witchcraft, pp. 355, 356, where, after making 
the charge referred to, he adds: “‘It is no merely modern propensity, prompted by a dis- 
regard of the tendency of that time, to charge so much upon the baleful misuse of lit- 
erature, for these books were recognized even in the Mathers’ day as an active agency, 
leading to direful events.” In support of this he quotes Baxter, who said that the 
Ilustrious Providences would overcome incredulity as to the existence of witches, 
and Hutchinson, whose essay on witchcraft came out thirty-four years after Mather’s 
book. The same charge appears again and again in the work of other historians, less 
scholarly and careful than Justin Winsor. 

57. F. Hutchinson, 4n Historical Essay, 2d ed., p. 101. 


“DOLEFULL WITCHCRAFT” 307 


and other sober citizens believed to have occurred, strengthened 
in his readers’ minds opinions which made it possible for them to 
see in the Salem Village excitement evidence of a real outbreak 
of crime.°* This is well enough, if we are content to accept also 
what logically follows, and to admit that his responsibility was 
shared by those ministers who concurred in the idea that narra- 
tives of witchcraft cases were an indispensable part of any history 
of the “remarkable” events of New England. Willard, John 
Whiting, John Russell, and Joshua Moodey all furnished him 
material, by writing of cases which had come to their attention.’ 
If his book was pernicious, they share with him the reproach of 
having unwittingly contributed to a tragedy —a reproach ap- 
plicable also to all men who spoke of witches of which they had 
seen or heard. With them must be classed, too, the Englishmen 
who wrote of witches to their American friends, the German and 
English scientists whom Mather quoted, and the writers of a host 
of other books written before and after his and accessible to 
readers in New England. He did no more than edit a historical 
collection, to which he added his own denunciation of certain 
superstitions, one of which cost at least one life as late as 1863.°° 

But he did argue that witches existed, and this has excluded 
all else in the minds of some historians. This doctrine, however, 
needed no advocate in 1684; no one could have written a history 
of New England without including the witchcraft cases unless 
he were deliberately to omit a chapter of what was generally 
recognized as historical fact, and no one thus writing could have 
urged disbelief in witchcraft unless he had been a sceptic far 
in advance of any the colonies knew. Mather wrote history. 


Witchcraft filled but a small part of his book,® and he preached 


58. Cf., for a modern expression of this point of view, J. A. Doyle, The Puritan 
Colonies, 11, 389. Mr. Doyle says, however, that to the I//ustrious Providences “anyone 
might contribute an account of anything which sounded like a miracle.” This is hardly 
fair, for one remembers that we have no proof that Mather printed any story simply 
because it was contributed. Cf. p. 174, ante. 

59. Cf. MHS Coll., Series 4, viii, 86ff., 466ff., 360ff., 555ff., and I. Mather, Essay 
for the Recording of Illustrious Providences, pp. 96, 99, 113, 114. 

60. Memorial History of Boston, ii, 172 and n. Mather, one remembers, in his J//us- 
trious Providences, argued against the “‘water-test” for witches. 

61. In the edition of the [//ustrious Providences, of London, 1890, 23 pages are de- 
voted to “things Preternatural which have Hapned in New England,” 24 to an argu- 
ment proving “‘that there are Daemons and Possessed Persons,” and 33 to “Appari- 
tions.” The book contains 262 pages of text. In other words, less than one third of its 
space is devoted to witchcraft cases. G. L. Burr (Narratives, p. 6n.) says: “It is true 
the book of Mather is not wholly on ‘the world of spirits’: other ‘providences’ fill half 


308 INCREASE MATHER 


against superstition. If the work was of evil influence, so were 
most histories of the day, so was much other literature prior to 
1700, and so is many a book written to-day in the interest of 
some theory now accepted but doomed to fall with time. 

Yet a careful modern historian writes that Increase Mather 
deliberately sought to encourage credulity and superstition, and 
sees no way by which he can be forgiven! The reply to this 
is contained in what has been said above. And, had any man 
fancied that “superstition,” as applied to witchcraft, needed aid 
from his pen, he could hardly have chosen a worse method than 
the writing of a book of narratives, which, for the most part, 
concerned nothing supernatural. He could hardly have been so 
addle-pated as to forget his aim, and challenge some points of 
popular credulity, and certainly he would have wasted no time 
on scientific discussions of magnetism and heat. Had his purpose 
been to encourage credulity, he could have committed no greater 
folly than to brand many tales of witchcraft as false! To say 
that his dark intention is proved by contemporary evidence, is 
to distort the facts. Baxter said, in 1691, that the “Illustrious 
Providences” was a sufficient answer to the disbeliever in witch- 
craft. Of course it was, just as was any standard history, or the 
Bible. But Baxter never hints that Mather, or Glanvill, or Boyle, 
or anyone else, wrote in order to egg on the credulous and super- 
stitious. Hutchinson, writing in 1718, is no contemporary, and 
he, too, was careful to impute no motives. He wrote in a later 
generation, when belief in witchcraft was waning. His view of 
the volume. But it is more largely so than any earlier collection of its sort, and in this 
the author’s interest clearly centres.” Two thirds, not half, of the volume, deals with 
other subjects. If it treats witchcraft more largely than other collections, it may be 
because witchcraft had been more prevalent in New England. I can find no evidence 
that Mather’s interest centred more on the witchcraft narratives than on any other 
of his chapters. 

62. Justin Winsor, in The Literature of Witchcraft, pp. 355, 356, says: ‘“‘The syste- 
matic efforts of the Mathers, father and son, to engage the superstitious and reckless — 
and in this nefarious business Increase at a later day used his position as President of 
Harvard College, the better to accomplish his ends — led to many ministers and others 
helping, by offering a premium on invention and exaggeration, to pour in upon the ex- 
pectant credulous, what Mather was pleased to call ‘memorable or illustrious provi- 
dences.’’’ He then goes on to say that this view is supported by evidence of writers in 
Mather’s lifetime. The facts are that neither of the authorities Winsor cites (one of 
whom wrote thirty-four years after 1684) suggested that Mather wrote with any design 
to encourage superstition. Furthermore, as to his desire to “engage the superstitious,’ 
Mather writes in Cases of Conscience, p. "264, ' “The Laws and Customs of the Kingdom 
of darkness, are not always and in all places the same. And it is good for men to con- 


cern themselves with them as little as may be.” This is a statement quite out of place 
in the mouth of a man with the motives Winsor ascribes to Mather! 


Pte og me ee 


“DOLEFULL WITCHCRAFT” 309 


a book written thirty-four years before is not good evidence as to 
its character or its writer’s. 

Cotton Mather has suffered more at the hands of later critics 
than his father, but now and then an attempt has been made 
to bring down both with the same stone. Leaving aside the fact | 
that the younger Mather was himself advanced in his thought, 
and more than once took precautions to check the spread of the 
excitement in 1692,® it is easy to show that there is no reason 
to criticize Increase Mather for his relation to the doings of his 
son. The attempt to attack him through Cotton rests on the 
postscript to the “‘Cases of Conscience,” where, as we have seen, 
he approves the publication of the “Wonders of the Invisible 
World.” This was, to repeat, no more than an endorsement of 
a book which, while asserting the reality of witchcraft, urged the 
best known methods of arriving at the truth as to the guilt of 
the accused. 

Cotton Mather abstracted the directions given by Perkins and 
Gaule, which would have worked mercifully had they been used 
in Salem, and cautioned against errors of passion or haste in 
fighting the devil’s assault upon New England. He summarizes 
an English witch trial under Judge Hale and five of the Salem 
trials, getting Stoughton and Sewall to vouch for the correctness 
of his record. The whole was a thorough exposition of the ortho- 
dox view as to witches, and of the most cautious views as to the 
methods by which they should be tried. It contained nothing 
that Willard, Wise, Baxter, Boyle, Glanvill, Browne, or Evelyn 
would have been likely to disapprove, unless in the account of the 
trials, written with no protest as to the evidence accepted, we 
find some details repugnant to the best standards of the time. 
This account Cotton Mather wrote, one remembers, by order of 
the judges, who wished to have whatever could be said in favor 
of their procedure made public. The English trial described 
introduced much “spectral evidence,” but it was regarded as 
insufficient, and the verdict came only when witnesses testified 
that the accused had performed supernatural acts. Proceeding 
to discuss Salem, Mather writes of five trials in no one of which 
was “spectral evidence” excluded, but in no one of which was it 
unsupported by other evidence, ridiculous to-day but of damning 
weight in an age when witches were common and their ways well 
known. 

63. Cf. W. F. Poole, in Memorial History of Boston, vol. ii. 


310 INCREASE MATHER 


_ Thus Increase Mather lent his support to nothing which was 
repugnant to the most liberal theories as to the adequate proofs 
of a witch’s guilt. And, when credulity is in question, it is only 
fair to remember that Cotton Mather wrote, not of what he had 
seen, but of the testimony accepted by a court of law and spread 
on its records as true. 

Finally, Increase Mather has been accused of responsibility 

for establishing the witch court and continuing its activities 
through the summer of 1692. The argument is simple. Mather 
was influential in making Phipps governor, and Phipps was his 
disciple. Had he not approved, the court would never have been 
appointed. Had he wished it, Phipps must have stopped the 
trials. Had he spoken out, his position as a leader was such that 
the whole excitement would have died away. 

Nothing is more dangerous, of course, than an attempt to 
define the influence of one man upon another in politics. There 
can be no shred of proof that Mather approved, or failed to 
oppose, the establishment of the court. If every act of Phipps is 
to be ascribed to his pastor, then to Mather belongs the credit for 
ending the trials, and pardoning the victims. Moreover, Stough- 
ton was as much Mather’s appointee as Phipps, and Stoughton, 
we know, was opposed by the party whose views Mather expressed 
in the “Cases of Conscience.” Only conjecture can support 
criticism of the Teacher of the Second Church as the dictator of 
all Phipps’s acts, and if conjecture lays at his door all the gov- 
ernor’s bad deeds, it cannot fairly deny him credit for the good 
works of his disciple. If Phipps was Mather’s slave, we may with 
equal reason say that Stoughton was one, but records prove that 
this was not the case. Nathaniel Saltonstall, too, was chosen to 
office by Mather, and if Phipps represented the divine’s influence, 
why not also Saltonstall, whose attitude we praise? 

We have facts to prove Mather’s position as member and 
leader of the liberal party in the discussion of legal methods. 
The charges against him rest on guesswork, and on a hypothesis 
which makes him, at one and the same time, the mentor of Sal- 
tonstall, Stoughton, and Phipps, men who held different views 
and chose different courses, and gives to him the credit for end- 
ing the trials. His reputation has nothing to fear from such con- 
Jectures or from the facts. 

There remain to be considered the comments made by Robert 


64. Cf., for example, Winsor, The Literature of Witchcraft, p. 360. 


“DOLEFULL WITCHCRAFT” ead, 


Calef.% Calef is an American of whom we may be proud, because 
he was “modern” enough to question some commonly accepted 
beliefs as to witchcraft. True, he argued, like those he criticized, 
from no purely rationalistic ground, but from his own interpre- 
tation of Scripture, and too often he confronted well-attested 
statements by flat denials, not convincing from a strictly logical 
point of view. He was no writer, and by no means a scholar, but 
he did mock some things that we now hold to be “delusions.” 
He was a man of the world, and of common sense. He had 
definite views, however poorly supported they were. He wrote, 
unfortunately, too late to deserve any credit for the ending of the 
witchcraft excitement, and when his book came out, Sewall’s 
public repentance for the methods he had used at Salem had 
said all that Calef could say. Public opinion was, when his 
work was printed, as enlightened as he. He did not deny that 
there were witches, nor did his neighbors; but they had come to 
see, even before he did, that some innocent blood had been shed 
in 1692. 

Most of his “More Wonders of the Invisible World” was an 
attack on Cotton Mather. He also found space for a paragraph 
or two directed against Willard, the clergy and judiciary in gen- 
eral, and against Increase Mather. To him he refers compara- 
tively rarely. He mentions his presence with his son at the bed- 
side of a suspected sufferer from witchcraft in Boston, after the 
Salem outbreak had passed, but does not record how scrupulously 
careful we know Cotton Mather to have been in avoiding any- 
thing that could lead to fresh accusations or a new stirring of 
popular superstition.*%7 He bases his remarks on a paper written 
by the younger Mather, but printed without the author’s con- 
sent.°® He indulges in innuendoes which led the Mathers to bring 

65. There is some doubt as to the identity of Calef. See W. F. Poole, in Memorial 
History of Boston, ii, 165 ff.; S. G. Drake, The Witchcraft Delusion, i, xiff.; and G. L. 
Burr, Narratives, pp. 291ff. Calef wrote More Wonders of the Invisible World, London, 
1700, printed in Drake, op. cit., 11, 1ff. 

66. January 14, 1697, Sewall made public statement of his regret for the errors of 
the court, but did mot deny the reality of witchcraft. MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 445. Nor 
did the government, in calling a fast day to atone for the errors at Salem, deny that 
Satan had been active. See Jdid., 446 n. 

67. Cf. R. Calef, More Wonders, ii, 49, 51, 55. As to Cotton Mather’s caution, cf. 
W. F. Poole, in Memorial History of Boston, ii, 156, 157. 

68. Of this document Calef writes (More Wonders, p. 14): “I received [it] of a 
Gentleman, who had it of the Author, and communicated it to use, with his express 


consent.” To whom the “‘his” refers is not easy to decide, and “consent... to use” 
is hardly consent to publish. 


R12 INCREASE MATHER 


an action against him.° On his writing an apparently contrite 
letter, the proceedings were dropped.’° But, curiously enough, in 
all this, Calef finds few specific charges to bring against Increase 
Mather individually, without deserting his subject to go afield 
in a discussion of the agents’ work in England.” There are hints 
that Mather served his own interest rather than his country’s. 
He is strangely silent as to the “Cases of Conscience,” but he 
refers more than once to the paragraphs of the ministers’ reply 
of June 15, 1692, which spoke of the need for continuing the 
court’s efforts according to the laws of God and England. 

On the whole, there is nothing here that needs answer. The 
book appeared when Increase Mather was opposed by many on 
grounds other than his views on witches, and such effect as it had 
in weakening his influence it owed, probably, not to any superior 
wisdom as to events of 1692 and 1693, but to its timely recapitu- 
lation of the arguments most useful to Mather’s enemies in the 
church and in politics. Such a work, as we shall see, offered wel- 
come material to those who sought weapons against the Mathers; 
but even so, it was quite adequately answered by certain citizens 
who thought with the leaders of the Second Church. To their 
reply, Mather himself added a few paragraphs, disposing of the 
attacks upon his conduct in England.” The witchcraft issue was, 
so far as Increase was concerned, the least important item in 
Calef’s arsenal. 

Summing up, we find Increase Mather in 1692 as a believer in 
witchcraft, an opponent of the methods of the court, and an ally 
and leader of those whom we see as the most liberal of the time. 
He wrote the first full statement of their views, and throughout 
the whole excitement he kept himself from any act or speech that 
could possibly have increased the harm that was done. His creed 
he epitomized himself, when he wrote: “It were better that ten 


69. Calef, More Wonders, p. §5. 

70. W. F. Poole, in Memorial History of Boston, ii, 167. 

71. A reading of Calef makes this clear. He does, however, say (More Wonders, 
iii, 157): “It is rather a Wonder that no more Blood was shed, for if that Advice of his 
[Phipps’s] Pastors could still have prevailed with the Governour, Witchcraft had not 
been so shammed off as it was.” Calef seems not to have known that Phipps gave In- 
crease Mather credit for his influence in stopping the trials. There is more excuse for 
this failure on Calef’s part, than on that of later historians. As for Calef’s attack on 
Mather as agent, see Andros Tracts, ii, 315-323, where the charges, and Mather’s 
quite adequate reply, are given. 

72. The answer was: Some Few Remarks, etc., Boston, 1701, by O. Gill and others. 
Cf. also, Andros Tracts, ii, 315-323. 


“DOLEFULL WITCHCRAFT” 313 


suspected Witches should escape, than that one innocent Person 
should be Condemned.” 

This much can be shown by the evidence hitherto accessible to 
all students. To it we may now add Mather’s own statement of 
his position in the witchcraft affair. Like “spectral evidence,” 
what Mather says of himself must be supported by other records 
in order to pass current to-day, not because the Mathers’ testi- 
mony can be proved to be unsound, but because those historians 
to whom they have seemed sinister figures have found it neces- 
sary to attack their veracity. We have seen how Increase Mather 
appears in the testimony of his contemporaries, and in the acces- 
sible records. With this picture agrees his own description of his 
attitude. , 

“I found ye country in a sad condition,” he writes in May, 
1692, “by reason of witchcraft & possessed persons. The judges 
& many of ye people had espoused a notion yt ye devill could not 
personate inhocent persons as afflicting others. I doubt [i. e. fear] » 
yt inocent blood was shed by mistakes of that nature. I therefore 
published my Cases of Conscience de witchcrafte, &c. By wch, 
(it is sayed) many were enlightened, juries convinced, & the 
shedding of more iftocent blood prevented.” 73 The truth of this 
document remains unshaken. 

The space devoted to Increase Mather’s relation to the witch- 
craft outbreak is not justified, perhaps, by its importance in his 
life. But later criticism has so often determined its final judg- 
ment on inferences wrested from the events of 1692, that no biog- / 
raphy can afford to let the matter go uninvestigated. For the 
purposes of twentieth-century eulogy, it would be possible to 
regret that he was not a Hutchinson thirty years ahead of his 
time, or even a Calef; but biography can hope for no more than 
to attempt a fair estimate of his position. Its verdict must be 
that, in witchcraft, he was not a radical on the side of what we 
now see as the truth, but an orthodox educated man, sharing the | 
most liberal of the then orthodox doctrines. 

Much has been said of the influence exerted by his stand on 
witchcraft in bringing down his power from the heights it reached 
in 1687 or 1692.74 Nothing is harder to determine than such 


73. Autobiography. 

74. Cf. J. A. Doyle, The Puritan Colonies, ii, 400, 401. J. T. Adams (The Found- 
ing, p. 455) says that “public opinion was arrayed solidly against”? Cotton Mather 
when, in 1693, he “tried to start another alarm in Boston.” Cotton, of course, did 


314 INCREASE MATHER 


influences. Mather, in 1692, was open to attack, as we have seen, 
from opponents of the charter and of the officers he had chosen 
for the colony, and from all those to whom the government’s acts 
were unwelcome. Nearly ten years later, when his prestige 
received its first serious blow, other forces than political enmity 
played a part. It is hardly necessary to feel that the community 
rebelled against his opinions on witchcraft, and that therein lay 
the cause of his partial loss of popular favor. Hostility to him can 
be shown to have many roots, but there is no evidence that any 
of his foes based their feeling on dislike for his relation to the 
events in Salem Village. 

There is only one bit of evidence bearing on the popular view of 
those concerned in the witchcraft trials, and this has been curi- 
ously neglected by historians. We have a record of the result of 
the election of 1693. Those voting were not, it is true, the rank 
and file of the people, but they were their representatives, and as 
dependent on their favor as legislators of to-day. The issue was 
determined, of course, by other forces than approval or dis- 
approval of what had been done in the witch court. Men were 
voted for, then as now, because they were personally liked, or 
because their decision on this or that question had pleased the 
voters. At the same time, a few of those who were candidates in 
1693 were so involved in the Salem trials that their fate at the 
polls may reasonably be interpreted as partial evidence, at least, 
of the popular feeling toward their deeds in combating the wiles 
of Satan. 

Twenty-eight councillors were elected.”* Of these, eighteen 
not “try to start another alarm” (cf. W. F. Poole, in Memorial History of Boston, ii, 
146ff.), and his account of the 1693 case was not printed until Calef brought it out. 
There is no evidence that “public opinion was arrayed solidly against” him, though, 
seven years later, one man criticized him, making charges most of which he denied. 
Of course, by 1700, when Increase Mather was attacked on various grounds, and when 
public opinion had had seven years to develop a more enlightened point of view on 
witchcraft, an attack, like that of Calef, was useful, and played a part in stirring up 
feeling against the Mathers. It does not prove that in 1693 any popular reaction against 
their witchcraft views had occurred, or even that any had occurred in 1700, except on 
the part of one man. Probably it is safe to say that Calef’s book in 1700 aroused some 
feeling against the Mathers’ witchcraft attitude, among those who read it without 
examination of its facts, or memory of what, precisely, the Mathers had done; and so, 
by 1700, the witchcraft episode may have played a part in weakening Increase and 
Cotton. But it seems to me to be quite unsafe to say that immediately after the trials 
popular opinion turned against them, because of their witchcraft views. Such state- 
ments, however, are found in many histories. None of these, nevertheless, so far as I 


know, points to the election results in 1693, which are referred to in the text. 
75. Palfrey, iv, 142; MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 378. 


“DOLEFULL WITCHCRAFT” 315 


had been chosen to office by Mather in the previous year. 
Nearly two thirds of his appointments were thus confirmed by 
the representatives of the people. Of those rejected, one, the 
aged Bradstreet, was probably unwilling to serve.7° Of the 
others, three were men who had held office before Mather ap- 
pointed them, and the remaining six were men whom he had 
chosen from those not previously endorsed by the voters. Now, 
of this class of men he chose but eight, and only two were re- 
elected. In other words, though most of the government he had 
chosen was confirmed in office, the fortunate candidates were for 
the most part those who had been office-holders prior to 1692, 
and of the candidates who may be said to have been selected by 
him on personal grounds, three quarters failed of popular sup- 
port. If all his appointees were under his influence, he still con- | 
trolled the government; but most of those whom he had chosen » 
on his own responsibility were rejected. 

Why was this? Not on religious grounds, for but one of the 
defeated was a member of his congregation. Can we then say 
that the shift in the membership of the Council represented the 
voters’ views on witchcraft, and their repudiation of Mather and 
some of his less distinguished friends? No such answer is possible. 
Of those rejected, not one, so far as we know, played any promi- 
nent part in the witch trials, or expressed his views in regard to 
them. But of the nine judges who sentenced the witches, every 
one was elected to the Council in 1693. The most liberal of all, 
Nathaniel Saltonstall, received fewer votes than Sewall, Win- 
throp, or Richards, and only a few more than Stoughton himself. 
Danforth, whom Brattle called an opponent of the court’s meth- 
ods, ran behind Winthrop and Sewall. There is here no evidence 
that the populace and their legislators saw those involved in con- 
demning the witches as deluded or inhumane. Every judge re- 
ceived the stamp of popular approval, and the two who seem 
most likely to have been liberals did not head the list. The most 
popular name was that of Samuel Sewall, who felt, in later 
years, that he had erred enough to make necessary a public 
recantation.77 ) 

It is possible to explain the result of this election only by re- 
garding the issue as in no way concerned with witchcraft, but as 
old charter versus new. From this point of view we can see why 
those men whose claim to office lay only in Mather’s favor should 


76. Palfrey, iv, 142. 77. MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 378. 


316 INCREASE MATHER 


fail, if popular opinion to any considerable extent opposed the 
charter he had brought from England. We can see also why 
Danforth and Cooke were elected. Both held the old charter 
view of independence, and clung to a belief in the colony’s right 
to dispense with royal governors. Hutchinson was near enough 
to 1693 to be able to judge more accurately than we can, and he 
was far better equipped with records. He gives no hint that the 
shift in the make-up of the Council was due to any but the ob- 
vious political motive.7* There was, as yet, no overwhelming 
opposition to the new charter, for some of those retained in office 
supported the new order; but there was a feeling that a more truly 
representative character should be given to a body which Mather 
had composed solely of those who he felt sure would support 
the government to which he was himself committed. 

The election of 1693, then, reveals no trace of a popular reac- 
tion against belief in witchcraft or Mather’s views upon it, but 
shows the strength of the old charter party led by Elisha Cooke. 
~ The political rift was real, and widened with the passing years. 
Cooke came home from England in 1692, and kept a “Day of 
Thanksgiving for his safe Arrival.” Neither Mather was there. 
Perhaps they were not invited; perhaps they refused to go. In 
any case, Samuel Sewall scented “Animosities,” and prayed that 
“the Good Lord unite us in his Fear.” 79 He was not heard, and 
the two parties grew away from one another. In the beginnings 
of this division between the advocates of colonial independence 
and the adherents of the new charter lies the explanation of the 
election of 1693, and what we should call to-day its political 
“rebuke” to Increase Mather. 

Voters in May, 1693, saw him as we must see him when we free 
our minds from the authority of the last two centuries, and 
study his position as his neighbors knew it. He came through the 
witchcraft ordeal unscathed. He believed in witchcraft, but he 
urged moderation and justice, not fanatical zeal. The saving of 
innocent life interested him more than the hunting down of every 
guilty witch. Such men as Brattle, clearest sighted of all those 
who lived through the alarming events at Salem Village, saw him 
as a wise guide, and his writing was the most complete expres- 
sion of their views. Once more he proved himself in the front 
rank of his day, and able to speak clearly and decisively for what 
he believed to be the right. 


78. T. Hutchinson, History, ii, 70. 79. MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 369. 








ELISHA COOKE 


= 


= 


—— 


a | 





CHAPTER XVIII 


DEFENDING HIS FAITH 
GRR 1692 the story of Increase Mather’s life is that of a 


constant development in leadership. In that year he was of 
unique rank in the colony. He had printed more books than any 
other writer in New England. He was the close friend and spirit- 
ual adviser of the governor. He was the sponsor of the new 
charter. Phipps and Stoughton owed their offices to him, and, 
until 1693, the Council members held their places because he had 
seen fit to choose them. He was in fact, if not in name, the leader 
of the local Congregational Church, and he was President of 
Harvard College. 

A scant decade after his return from England his fortunes had 
sharply declined. Then any single book he had ever written was 
surpassed in interest and importance, even in its own day, by the 
work of another New Englander,* and his writings were no longer 
printed more often in Boston than those of any other man. In 
1701, if he still preserved influence with the governor, he dealt 
with a man less under his spell than Sir William Phipps. He was 
no longer the most active leader of his own congregation, and 
in general church councils, though he was still revered, his 
position was threatened by the well-organized opposition of 
promising young divines. And he was no longer president of the 
college. Worst of all, his loss of office at Harvard was due, essen- 
tially, to the efforts of those with whom he disagreed, and those 
whose ideas seemed to him to hold peril for New England. 

Some elements in his decline brought no pangs. In literary 
preéminence the torch was not wrested from him, but gladly sur- 
rendered to his son. So also Cotton carried on the Mathers’ 
tradition of dominance in the church, if, at times, deficiencies in 
his own nature, and his lack of sympathy with the changing 
ideals of the day, caused him to fail where his father had been 
consistently successful. But in the passing of his hold on Harvard 
and the waning of his political influence there was a real reverse 


1. Cotton Mather’s Magnalia was finished by 1700, 


318 INCREASE MATHER 


for Increase Mather, and thence he drew more than one hour of 
discouragement. 

For biography, of course, these years from 1692 to 1701 reveal 
more than most other periods of his life. The ideals to which a 
man clings in the face of opposition, those for which he will give 
up a part of his claim on popular esteem, and the qualities he 
shows when he has to defend doctrines previously unchallenged, 
offer a precious index of character. 

It is in connection with a new religious movement in Boston, 
his relation to Harvard, and his efforts to serve New England in 
London once more before he died, that the fundamentals of 
Mather’s position appear; but before coming to them, one may 
well glance at the background of events in the state and the round 
of minor concerns which continued to play their part in what was 
still a very active career. The key to what happened in Cam- 
bridge, and the antidote for a misconception of its meaning, 
lie in the day’s politics. The attacks on Mather, which centred 
about innovations in church practice, struck not only at him but 
at his brethren in the pulpit, and some of the more virulent out- 
bursts, purporting to be caused solely by a lofty zeal for truth, 
are best explained when we remember Cotton Mather’s relation 
to his father. The son’s violence of phrase, and the acidity of his 
vocabulary, are of themselves sufficient to explain certain coun- 
terblasts which, perforce, wounded both father and son.? 

Increase was no longer the sole representative of his family to 
make his voice heard, nor can he have been lonely by his own 
fireside. Of his children, Jerusha was but eight years old in 1692. 
Hannah married John Oliver in 1697. Samuel, whose degree 
from Harvard was awarded while he was still in London, went 
soon to England to take up his life-work there. Sarah had 
married Nehemiah Walter, a minister consistently allied with 
the Mathers, and the first of their five children born in the next 
ten years was named Increase. Elizabeth became Mrs, William 
Greenough in 1696, and Maria married Bartholomew Green 
in 1688. By 1701 the Greens had three children. Cotton, in 
1692, had two, and five more were born to him before 1700. The 
Mather line had ramified throughout the colony, and a family 
party at the grandfather’s house must have crowded its rooms. 


2. Cf. Cotton Mather’s diary, MHS Coll., Series 7, vol. vii, and his published writ- 
ings in this period. 
3. Cf. H. E. Mather, Lineage of Rev. Richard Mather. 


DEFENDING HIS FAITH 319 


Mather’s church was his second home, and in the years 1692 
to 1701, inclusive, he won, with Cotton, one hundred and seventy- 
three members. This was a decrease of fourteen from the record 
of the preceding decade, in spite of the natural increase in popu- 
lation, and points, probably, to some slackening of interest in 
church membership, at least in those congregations where the 
strictly orthodox tests for admission were maintained. None the 
less, with a thousand or more hearers for his sermons,’ and a 
steady accession of new communicants, he could draw from the 
statistics no conclusive proof of anything more than a slight 
change in popular sentiment. Nor does the evidence from other 
sources show us more than this. 

Aside from the Second Church itself, the ““Cambridge Asso- 
ciation” of ministers was the centre of Mather’s strictly religious 
activities. This body was formed on October 13, 1690, while 
Mather was in England. Probably he was consulted, for his 
name appears among its charter members.° He constantly refers 
in his writings to the duty of ministers to discuss questions of 
policy, and there are hints as to the obligation of individual 
churches to abide by their pastors’ decisions. In such organiza- 
tion was the obvious safeguard for a Congregationalism weakened 
by the loss of its erstwhile political control. Certainly Mather 
was active in the councils of the “Association,” and more than 
one of his books originated in a desire to publish the views of his 
brethren as they were expressed at its meetings. 

In such undertakings, of course, his influence was not merely 
local. Boston was the seat of the government; and a preacher 
there inevitably came into touch with men from all parts of the 
colony. The latest books printed there circulated throughout 
New England, and, as religious enthusiasts to-day most often 
seek inspiring sermons in large metropolitan churches, so, in 
1692, the colonist who longed for the heights of pulpit oratory 
rejoiced at the chance to hear Willard or Mather in Boston. 
Increase, as a young man, refused to serve elsewhere than in a 
Boston church, and however envious smaller congregations were 
of their favored neighbors who sat under his ministry, no one of 
them ventured to suggest that he leave his large parish for a 
more remote town. But, in 1692, when Nathaniel Gookin died, 

4. My figures are from a MS. volume owned by the Second Church. Cf. F. B. 
Dexter, Estimates of Population. 


5. I. Mather, The Blessed Hope, p. 27; Quincy, i, 499. 
6. MHS Proc., xvii, 263; W. Walker, Creeds and Platforms, pp. 470-472. 


320 INCREASE MATHER 


the church at Cambridge, which had long commanded the 
services of leading divines, unanimously called Mather.? Prob- 
ably they were emboldened to hope by the knowledge that the 
President of Harvard was by necessity often in Cambridge, and 
they may have foreseen how much pressure was soon to be 
brought to force Mather to live at the college. Nevertheless he 
refused the invitation, though he manifested his interest in 
Gookin by turning over to his widow a part of his own income.® 

He followed in Gookin’s footsteps, too, by devoting part of 
his time to the conversion of the Indians. He had written to 
arouse interest in what was being done to turn red-skinned and 
carefree heathens into the most conventional of Puritans; and, 
in 1693, he signed with others a petition to Phipps asking that a 
mission be sent to carry on the work.° To him Samuel Treat 
wrote as to the savages’ condition, and some of his correspondence 
with the London Society for the Propagation of the Gospel is 
preserved.'? Whatever our feeling may be as to Mather’s atti- 
tude toward King Philip’s son, twenty years before, there is no 
doubt that he was merciful in 1698, when he expressed himself 
in favor of sparing the lives of certain captive Indians.* And in 
order that they and their compatriots might taste some of the 
pleasures of Puritan readers, several of Mather’s sermons were 
translated into their language.” 

From his diary we get glimpses of Mather dining with Phipps, 
or with Sir Francis Wheeler, that “brave, though unfortunate” 
officer of His Majesty’s Navy."* We find Increase worrying about 
his brother-in-law, John Cotton, who was convicted of various 
“scandals” and ejected from his church at Plymouth.“ His 
relative in Boston, stern in the cause of righteousness, is said to 
have declared that the punishment was too light.* A more godly 
member of the Mather family, Increase’s brother Nathaniel, died 
in England in July, 1697, and the tidings brought grief to Boston.” 

7. MHS Coll., Series 1, vii, 32. 8. J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, ii, 479. 

g. MHS Coll., Series 3, 1, 133. 

i a Sibley, Biographical Sketches, ti, 305; J. W. Ford, Some Correspondence, etc., pp 

11, New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xviii, 166. 

12. J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, i, 454, Item 66; MHS Coll., Series 6,1, 233. 

13. MS. Diary, 1693; J. Charnock, Biographia Navalis, ii, 76ff. The quotation is 
from Iéid., 11, 87. Cf. also, MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 379. 

14. MS. Diary, 1697, Sept. 4, Oct. 30; Sibley, Biographical Sketches, i, 5o1ff. 

15. MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 461. 


16. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, i, 159; MS. Diary, 1697, Dec. 10; MHS Coil., 
Series 5, v, 465. 


DEFENDING HIS FAITH BOL 


There was disturbing news also of dissensions in Massachusetts 
congregations, especially at Watertown, and Increase Mather 
stated with some vigor his protest against the ordination of 
Simon Bradstreet in Charlestown.'? The reason for this attitude 
comes out more clearly when one turns to his general hatred of 
deviations from the old ways of New England Congregationalism. 
Bradstreet was but one of several who believed that part of the 
discipline of the early churches was not founded on a proper 
reading of the truth.® If in his case Mather was inclined to be 
strenuous in his objections, he was more pacific in his dealings 
in the case of Mr. Parris. The latter had been notoriously in- 
volved in the witchcraft excitement, and if there was any im- 
posture on the part of the “afflicted”’ children, or any wrong- 
doing in connection with their accusations, Parris can hardly 
be absolved from blame. His church, aware of this, sought to have 
him removed from their pulpit, and his case was referred to a 
committee of which Mather was a member. They proposed a 
compromise, but to no avail, and finally advised Parris to seek 
service elsewhere. They admitted frankly, of course, that “sun- 
dry unwarrantable and uncomfortable steps”’ had been taken in 
the days when the devil harried Salem Village, but the question 
was whether Parris himself had been imprudent. This the com- 
mittee seems to have regarded as unproved, but efforts to smooth 
matters over failed in the face of a congregation which, whatever 
the facts may have been, had certain definite convictions as to 
their pastor.” 

Further gleanings from these years give records of Mather’s 
many friends and many books, of visits he made and received, of 
the dinners he attended, and of his patient study of the volumes 
in his library.?? He bought new books, too, and it is interesting to 
note that of the four volumes which we can identify as having 
been purchased between 1692 and 1701, three were the works of 
scientists. They were the “Acta Medica and Philosophica” of 
Thomas Bartholin, erstwhile professor of medicine at Copen- 


17. Cf. MHS Coll., passim, and MS. Diaries for these years. For Watertown, see 
especially the entry for March 24, 1697. Cf. also, Sibley, Biographical Sketches, ii, 425. 
A letter of Cotton and Increase Mather to the Charlestown Church is in MHS Coll., 
Series 4, vili, 119, and states the grounds of their objection to Bradstreet — principally 
that he denied the Congregational doctrine as to “church covenants.” 

18. W. Walker, Creeds and Platforms, pp. 476, 478. 

19. New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xi, 318f. 

20. See MS. Diaries. 


322 INCREASE MATHER 


hagen, a man whose writings seem to have been in high favor 
with Mather." In 1693 he bought David von der Beck’s “Ex- 
perimenta et Meditationes circa Naturalium Rerum Principia,” 
again the work of a physician and scientist. This was flanked 
by the “Epistolicae Quaestiones, cum Doctorum Responsis,”’ of 
Johannes Beverovicius, a third physician, better known by his 
proper Dutch name of Jan van Beverwyck.% The fourth book 
Mather is known to have bought in these years is theological,”4 
but, if his choice from the booksellers’ lists is a criterion, his 
taste for the moment was more for medical science than for writ- 
ings in the field where most of his own work had been done. 

Turning from the books he read to those he wrote, we find 
another considerable pile of publications. Most of them reveal 
little not already expressed in his writings. One finds, for example, 
a preface for “The Spirit of Man,” by Charles Morton,?> whom 
Edward Randolph regarded-as a dangerous religious radical, and 
most Puritans saw as a force for good in the councils of their 
church.”® There is also a preface for a new book by Willard.?7 
From a discussion by the Cambridge Association came Mather’s 
P mit eae ; 

Judgment of Several Eminent Divines,” and his statement of his 
views on the vexed question whether a man might marry his 
deceased wife’s sister.?® His interest in religious education dic- 
tated his “Solemn Advice to Young Men,” interesting to us 
chiefly because it exhorts Boston boys to resist temptations to 
piracy, a career no longer accessible to most wayward youths.?9 
One need not pause over his “Case of Conscience Concerning 

21. Mather’s copy of the Acta Medica is owned by the American Antiquarian Society. 
For other books of Bartholin owned by him, see J. H. Tuttle, Libraries, p. 316. 

221 Vids Do TL Gs 

DAUM Oa Dunk fa 

24. Origenes contra Celsum, etc., Cambridge (Eng.), 1658; now owned by W. G. 
Mather, Cleveland, Ohio. 

25. Boston, 1693. The preface is signed by Mather, James Allen, Samuel Willard, 
John Baily, and Cotton Mather. There is no evidence that Mather was the sole author. 

26. J. Quincy, History, passim; R. N. Toppan, Edward Randolph, iv, 90, 102. 

27. S. Willard, The Doctrine of the Covenant of Redemption, Boston, 1693. 

28. “The Judgment Of Several Eminent Divines Of The Congregational VVay 
Concerning A Pastors Power. Occasionally to Exert Ministerial Acts in another 
Church, besides that which is His Own Particular Flock.” Boston, 1693. ‘The 
Answer Of Several Ministers in and near Boston, To that Case of Conscience, Whether 
it is Lawful for a Man to Marry his Wives own Sister?” Boston, 1695. Cf. MHS Proc., 
XVii, 269. 

29. “Solemn Advice To Young Men, Not to Walk in the Wayes of their Heart, 
and in the Sight of their Eyes; but to Remember the Day of Judgment.” Boston, 


1695. 


DEFENDING HIS FAITH 323 


Eating of Blood,” 3° “Discourse Concerning the Uncertainty of 
the Times of Men,’’*" or his “ David Serving his Generation,” ? 
although it is well to remember those pages in the last-named 
book in which he emphasizes true devotion, not fear, as the main- 
spring of a godly life. “That keeping of the Commandments 
which proceeds from a slavish fear, and not from love, is not_ 
pleasing.” 33 Intense faith, a real “love” for righteousness, made } 
Puritanism for its disciples an ideal not grim and repellent, but,” 
one which could be accepted with the full vigor of heart and) 
soul. /In “Faithful Advice,” 34 a book signed by Mather and his” 
colleagues, among them Benjamin Colman,*5 a man too often 
painted as an object of the Mathers’ persistent hatred, there is 
an accidental reference to another cardinal point of Puritanism, 
its emphasis on learning: ““When the Knowledge of the Tongues 
and Arts Revived, Religion had a Revival with it: And though 
some Unlearned men have been useful to the Interests of Religion, 
yet no man ever decried Learning, but what was, an Enemy to 
Religion, whether he knew it or no.” 3° Mere silveriness of tongue 
could not, Mather’s friends believed, make amends for a lack of 
knowledge, and the significance of his words has not staled with 
time. A preface for Cotton Mather’s “Everlasting Gospel” 3? 
shows no new element in Increase’s development, nor does an- 
other preface, signed jointly with his son, for a new edition of a 


book by John Quick.3* “A Vindication of the Divine Authority 


30. “A Case of Conscience Concerning Eating of Blood, Considered and Answered.” 
Boston, 1697. For the ascription of this work to Increase Mather, see J. L. Sibley, 
Biographical Sketches, i, 453. Cf. MHS Proc., xvii, 274. 

31. “A Discourse Concerning the Uncertainty of the Times of Men, And The 
Necessity of being Prepared for Sudden Changes & Death, Delivered in a Sermon 
Preached at Cambridge in New-England. Decemb. 6.1696. On Occasion of the Sudden 
Death of Two Scholars belonging to Harvard Colledge.” Boston, 1697. 

32. “David Serving His Generation. Or, A Sermon Shewing What is to be done in 
order to our so Serving our Generation, as that when we Dy, we shall Enter into a Blessed 
Rest (Wherein Some account is given concerning many Eminent Ministers of Christ at 
London, as well as in N. E. lately gone to their Rest.) Occasioned by the Death, of the 
Reverend Mr. John Baily, Who Deceased at Boston in New-England. December 12th. 
1697.” Boston, 1698. 

Ep ae Aah eae 

34. In C. Mather, 4 Warning to the Flocks. See Sibley, op. cit., ii, 74, and reprinted 
in his Magnalia, book VII, chap. 5. The title of the preface in which Mather hada 
hand is: ““A Faithful Advice from several Ministers of the Gospel, in and near Boston, 
unto the Churches Of New-England; relating to the Dangers that may arise from 
Impostors, pretending to be Ministers.” It was dated December 28, 1699. 

35. Colman’s name is signed in the original edition, but not in the Magna/ia reprint. 

36. Pages 8 and 9. 37. Boston, 1700. 

38. J. Quick, The Young Mans Claim unto the Lord’s Supper. Boston, 1700. 


324 INCREASE MATHER 


of Ruling Elders” 3° contains nothing to detain the modern reader, 
and ““The Blessed Hope,” 4° aside from the fame it has won be- 
cause it contained the first copper-plate engraving done in 
America, a portrait of its author, demands attention for but one 
sentence. “Thoughts of the Blessed Hope,” Mather declared; 
should make men “Joyful in their Serving God. And if they 
be otherwise, it will be a Blemish to Religion. If alwayes de- 
jected and discouraged, it will discourage others, and make them 
think that Religion is a Malancholy thing.” If the nineteenth- 
century custom of regarding all joy as sinful was a heritage from 
the Puritans, it was handed down by those who ignored Increase 
Mather’s behests. On such points as this, there is much light 
to be drawn from his writings from 1692 to 1701, even though 
most of the minor works just considered hold little else to repay 
the twentieth-century reader. 

He had not forgotten how to write skilfully, however, and one 
or two passages written during these years testify to this fact. 
His preface to his son’s “Johannes in Eremo” 4#—a book con- 
taining biographies of Cotton, Wilson, Norton, and Davenport, 
all “fathers” of New England and all men whom Increase Mather 
had known and loved — shows an informal manner, but the style 
of one who writes neither hastily nor without feeling. Here and 
there faint reflections of Cotton Mather’s literary gestures 
appear, but for the most part effect is gained by simplicity of 
diction and structure. One paragraph gives not only an idea 
of the style but also a specific reminder that Mather’s views as 
to his conforming brethren had been modified by experience. 

“There are some,” he writes, ‘who will not be pleased, that 
any Notice is taken of the hard Measure which these excellent 
Men had from those persecuting Prelates, who were willing to 


39. “A Vindication of the Divine Authority of Ruling Elders In The Churches of 
Christ: Asserted by the Ministers & Elders, met together in a Provincial Assembly, 
Novemb, 2d. 1649. And Printed in London, 1650. Beginning at Page 34. to 48. Tran- 
scribed out of the Same Book. Whereunto is added, An Answer to the Question, 
Whether are not the Brethren, and not the Elders of the Church only, to Fudge concerning the 
Qualifications, and Fitness, of those who are Admitted into their Communion? By the 
Reverend Mr. Increase Mather, in his Book Entituled, The Order of the Gospel: Printed 
in the year, 1700. Beginning at Page 23. to 29. Reprinted for Publick Good.” 

40. “The Blessed Hope, And the Glorious Appearing of the Great God our Saviour, 
Jesus Christ. Opened & Applied, In Several Sermons.” Boston, 1701. 

41. W. Dunlap, History of the Rise and Progress, iii, 299; K. B. Murdock, The 
Portraits. 

42. Page 42. 

43. This is printed in C. Mather, Magnalia, book III, part i. 


DEFENDING HIS FAITH G25 


have the World rid of them. But it is impossible to write the 
History of New-England, and of the Lives of them who were the 
chief in it, and yet be wholly silent in that matter. That eminent 
Person, Dr. Tillotson (the late Arch-Bishop of Canterbury) did, 
not above four Years ago, sometimes express to me, his Resent- 
ments of the Injury which had been done to the first Planters of 
New-England, and his great dislike of Arch-Bishop Laud’s Spirit 
towards them. And to my knowledge, there are Bishops at this 
Day, of the same Christian Temper and Moderation with that 
Great and Good Man, lately dead. Had the Sees in England, 
fourscore Years ago, been filled with such Arch-Bishops, and 
Bishops, as those which King William (whom God grant long to 
Live and to Reign) has preferred to Episcopal Dignity, there had 
never been a New-England.” #4 

Such a preface defies classification except as the work of a man 
of letters. It is of the seventeenth century, to be sure, and its 
manner 1s not always consonant with what we expect in similar 
efforts to-day. It shows no incontrovertible signs of literary 
genius, but, seen in its own age, it reveals some skill, much emo- 
tion, and a taste for writing because one has something to say 
which deserves to be well said. 

In his “Folly of Sinning,” 45 a sermon preached at the execution 
of a woman who had murdered her child, Mather once more shows 
a true literary instinct. The speech to the criminal is frank to 
the point of brutality; but the painting of the horrors of hell 
shows imagination and an instinct for what was likely to shake a 
hardened heart. But all this leads up to the main plea, which is. 
for repentance. Christ can save, and His mercy is the one eter-_ | 
nal fact never to be forgotten.“““Go to Fesus Christ,’ Mather said.\ | 
“If you cannot go to him with a penitent heart, go to him for one. \/ 
Him has God Exalted to be a Prince and a Saviour to give Repent-} 
ance unto Israel and forgiveness of Sins. Oh Pray and Cry to him: | 
Pray him to pour his Blood on thy Soul: That will break the | 
Rockiest heart, the most 4damantine heart in the world. Pray | 
as David did. Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and 
cleanse me from my Sin. Purge me with Hysop and I shall be clean. | 
Thus does he pray that his Soul might be washed in the blood of ' 


44. Last paragraph of the Preface. 

45. “The Folly of Sinning, Opened & Applyed, In Two Sermons, Occasioned by the 
Condemnation of one that was Executed at Boston in New-England, on November r7th. 
1698.” Boston, 1699. 


326 INCREASE MATHER 


| Christ. And have not you need to pray after the same manner? 
If that precious blood be sprinkled on you, then notwithstanding 
your sins have been as Scarlet and red like Crimson they shall be 
as white as Snow /(p. 48). Again, in his “Two Plain and Prac- 
tical Discourses,’ 46 printed in London in 1699 from a shorthand 
transcript of two of Mather’s sermons, there are one or two pas- 
sages which show a feeling for the most vivid word and a realiza- 
tion of the possibilities of repetition and balance. 

“How clear is it from the Scriptures, that Men may not Wor- 
ship or Pray unto Angels, Saints, Graven Images? That one 
would think, that they that have the Scriptures, and own them 
to be the Word of God, should be convinced, that this ought not 
to be; yet come to a Papist, all the Scriptures you can produce to 
him, will not convince him of his Error. Alas, God hath shut 
their Eyes, and given them up to a Blind Mind! And when it is 
thus with [men] Miracles cannot Convert them; if God should 
work Miracles for them, they would not be Converted thereby; 
should God send Men from the Dead to them, neither would 
that Convert them. Should God break open the Barrs of the 
Bottomless Pit, and let loose Devils and Damned Wights, to 
come flying and crying into our Assemblies, with the chains of 
Darkness rattling about them to warn Sinners of the Wrath to 
come, and to tell them, what a Dreadful Place Hell is, neither 
would that Convert them” (pp. 99, 100). Those ‘‘Damned 
Wights,” “flying and crying” with their “rattling chains” must 
have been real images before Mather’s audience. 

There remain one or two books written in this period which 
deserve attention because they express Mather’s attitude toward 
events of the day or because they sum up important elements in 
his thought. Of the latter sort is his ‘Angelographia,” published 
in 1696.47 This was a collection of sermons on angels. He dis- 
claims any desire to discuss the scientific aspect of his subject, but 
that he felt it necessary thus to limit his subject proves that he 
was aware of the rational trend of the times. Nor was he un- 

46. “Two Plain and Practical Discourses Concerning I. Hardness of Heart. Shew- 
ing, That some, who live under the Gospel, are by a Judicial Dispensation, given up to 
that Judgment, and the Signs thereof. II]. The Sin and Danger of Disobedience to the 
Gospel.” London, 1699. 

ATs “ Angelographia, Or a Discourse Concerning the Nature and Power of the Holy 
Angels, and the Great Benefit which the True Fearers of God Receive by their Minis- 
try: Delivered in several Sermons: To which is added, A Sermon concerning the Sin 


and Misery of the Fallen Angels: Also a Disquisition concerning Angelical-Appari- 
tions.” Boston, 1696. 


ee 


DEFENDING HIS FAITH PAN 


critical in his views, for he declares in the preface that some so- 
called “Angelical apparitions” are delusions, and that “natural 
magic’’ may deceive men. He is frankly sceptical as to heavenly 
apparitions. Some such cases are due to disease; for if men “‘have 
been lately sick, and the disease wherewith they have been at- 
tended, has had any influence on the brain, that & Satan together 
will make them phansy very wonderful matters” (pp. 17, 18). 
Exclude Satan, and you have here an expression of a modern 
“rational” view. Nor is Mather prone to accept all history 
simply because it is in print. Speaking of a case described in 
books, he says: “I must confess, I am not easy to believe that 
Christinas death or her Ascension into Heaven was rea/, but that 
they were both Phantastical” (p. 34). And, with undeniable 
pertinence, he adds: ‘“‘ Nor do I know any cogent reason, why the 
Visions of one diseased with an 4poplexy should be thought to be 
of greater weight then the Visions of one diseased with a Fever 
or Calenture” (p. 34). His subject is close to what we call “psy- 
chical research,” and the rudiments of a critical spirit which he 
shows were, in his time and for a divine, more important than 
they now seem. 

In this book he decried, in passing, the dangers of apostasy. 
It was no straw man which he belabored. There were about him 
movements toward religious innovation and toward carelessness 
as to some of the old tenets of Puritanism. Some of his opponents 
seem to have construed his every reference to apostasy as an 
assault upon them. Yet he obviously aimed at no one man or 
party, but at all who receded from the old piety and the original 
New England form of worship. Because Mather’s criticisms on 
such backsliders explain much in the controversies which followed, 
they cannot be overlooked. 

He dated his preface to Cotton Mather’s “Life of Jonathan 
Mitchel,” “® May 7, 1697, and addressed it “To the Church 
at Cambridge” and “the Students of the Colledge there.” In 
this he defined what he saw as “‘apostasy”’ and made clear his 
attitude toward it. 

He goes at once to the old question of admission to the church. 
He had at first, one remembers, clung to the strictest view, but 
had later accepted Mitchell’s opinion in favor of the Half-Way 
Covenant, which provided for a relaxation of the tests for church 


48. C. Mather, “Ecclesiastes: The Life of the Reverend and Excellent Jonathan 
Mitchel,” in his Magnalia, book IV, part ii, chap. 4. 


328 INCREASE MATHER 


membership. With this much accepted, some New England Con- 
gregationalists, soon after the Synod of 1662, proceeded to the 
belief that such as were entitled to baptism under the new system 
should, even without experience of definite conversion, be en- 
titled to full communion. As early as 1677, in his “Call from 
Heaven,” Mather combatted this view.’ He believed, as did most 
of his brethren, that full rights of membership belonged only to 
those who were consciously regenerate and could offer satisfactory 
evidence of their state. The controversy was long and ardent, but 
Mather never retreated from his stand. 

The advocates of reducing the tests for membership strove, 
right or wrong, to alter what was generally regarded as a funda- 
mental of polity.s° Their plan would have made it possible for 
more men to come to communion. Thus far it was a democra- 
tizing process; but if, as Mather believed, it would destroy the 
meaning of communion to have it become anything less than a 
sacrament reserved for those who had won the right to it by a 
real trial of their faith, its merit is doubtful. Near the middle of 
the eighteenth century Jonathan Edwards went further in his 
wish to limit church membership,* and, later still, the tendencies 
represented by his opponents crystallized in the formation of a 
new sect. As to who was “right” and who was “wrong”’ in 1697, 
no decision is possible, except on the basis of such personal opin- 
ions as each of us may hold. The views Mather opposed were 
“ thoroughly at variance with the older New England theory and 
practise.” * If the Puritan experiment in Massachusetts had 
failed, they must be accepted. If it had worked well and still 
held promise, if it had influenced and guided strong men and 
women, and was still chosen by many of their descendants, it by 
no means deserved to be abandoned or denatured by any innova- 
tions however sincerely advocated. 

Mather had loved Mitchell, and he reminded his readers of his 
tutor’s views on baptism, taking the occasion to express his own 
convictions as well. “It cannot be denied,” he says, “but that 
there has been an error in some churches, who have made this or 
that mode to be a ‘divine institution, which Christ has not made 
to be so: and that there has been an unjustifiable severity in 


49. Cf. W. Walker, Creeds and Platforms, pp. 279, 280. 
50. Idem, 4 History, p. 182. 

KY op bid: 

52. W. Walker, Creeds and Platforms, p. 477. 


a 


DEFENDING HIS FAITH 329 


imposing circumstantials not instituted, whereby some truly 
gracious souls have been discouraged from offering themselves 
to joyn in fellowship with such churches. Thus it has been, when 
an oral declaration of faith and repentance has been enjoyned on 
all communicants, and that before the whole congregation; when 
as many an humble pious soul has not been gifted with such con- 
fidence.” This is moderation, surely. ‘‘Nevertheless,” he con- 
tinues, ‘“it concerns them [the churches] to beware of the other 
extream of laxness in admission to the Lord’s holy table”; and 
he enlarges upon this point. Finally he turns to the Harvard 
students in his audience, with an appeal to them not to “deviate 
and degenerate from the Holy Principles and Practises of” their 
“Fathers.” 

His direct statement of his opinions met with little favor with 
some of his audience. But even had he known how strong a 
sentiment a few young men nourished against his views, it 1s 
not likely that he would have betrayed what he saw as an essen- 
tial truth by keeping silence in order to preserve his own popu- 
larity. The president of a theological school to-day, who upholds 
his own beliefs, or his personal interpretation of the truth, al- 
though he knows that some of his faculty think him in error, 
or the college president who advocates compulsory Latin or 
Greek in opposition to some of his subordinates who would give 
up both, does just what Mather did, and deserves the same praise 
or blame we may bestow on him. If all such speakers managed 
to write such good prose as he did, judged by the standards of his 
time, if they were as sure of their authorities, and based their con- 
victions on so wide an experience, whatever we might think of 
their theories, we should certainly be forced to a word of appre- 
ciation of their method. 

Again, in “David Serving his Generation,” printed in 1698, 
Mather returned to the question of innovations in church prac- 
tice. “It was with respect unto Purity as to all Church Ad- 
ministrations,” he said, that the first settlers ‘followed the Lord 
unto a Land which was not Sown. Wherefore notwithstanding 
too many of this Generation, who are lamentably Degenerated 
from the Principles and Spirit of their Fathers and Grand- 


fathers, will rage at it, we cannot easily do a better service than © 


to withstand Innovations which would prove fatal to the 
Churches, and to the Interest of Christ’s Holy Kingdom among 
them. .. . We shall do well to remember, that there are Practices 


AES 


330 INCREASE MATHER 


which in some other places of the World, would be a step towards 
Reformation; that in a people so Instructed and Enlightened as 
we have been, would deserve the Name of great Degeneracy & 
Apostasy”’ (p. 22). With this general statement, there are linked 
specific counsels. The ministry must be maintained at a high 
standard, the Indian missions must be supported, the govern- 
ment of Harvard must “‘be confirmed in faithful hands, that will 
transmit it unto such Successors” (p. 32). And, with a direct 
reference to certain difficulties which he had found in administer- 
ing the college as he believed it should be administered, he adds 
that there should be “care that the Tutors there be such as shall 
make Conscience to Establish the Young Scholars in those Holy 
Principles of Truth” (p. 32). A harmless and general statement 
on the face of it, but one which could be easily construed by 
some hearers as a hint that the president was not altogether 
pleased with some of his subordinates at Harvard. 

In 1700, Mather wrote a preface for Willard’s “Peril of the 
Times Displayed.” §* Here he once more speaks of apostasy in 
New England, of the need for spiritual awakening, and to these fa- 
miliar themes he adds a mention of the improvement which has 
come to the Church of England. For us the chief interest of the 
preface is not in its matter or style, but in the proof it offers that, 
in 1700, Mather and Willard were friends. In 1697 they fell out 
about the election of tutors at Harvard, and Mather sent his 
colleague a message saying, “He will never come to his House 
more till he give him satisfaction.” * It has been suggested in 
some accounts that in 1700 or 1701 the two leading ministers of 
Boston were not on good terms. That they were, in 1700 at least, 
is proved by the fact that Mather wrote this preface for Willard. 
Moreover, that Mather wrote of apostasy here, and that Willard 
printed his remarks with his own work, is worth remembering 
when we find the former attacked as if he were the only minister 
in Boston who ever uttered or approved rebukes to those who 
fancied themselves the enlightened liberals of the day. Whatever. 
their quarrel in 1697 may have been, in 1700 Mather and Willard 
were in close touch personally and in their beliefs as to doctrine. 

As his books outlined his attitude toward religious changes, so 


53. S. Willard, “The Peril of the Times Displayed. Or The Danger of Mens taking 
up with a Form of Godliness, But Denying the Power of it. Being The Substance of 
several Sermons. ...” Boston, 1700. 

54. MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 464. 


DEFENDING HIS FAITH 331 


also his writings express much as to his political position. Two 
sermons, one delivered in 1693 and the other in 1699, testify to his 
attitude. 

The first, printed with the title, ‘““The Great Blessing of Primi- 
tive Counsellours,” 5» was preached by request of the government 
on the day of the election of 1693. On that day the officers whom 
Mather had chosen for the colony faced their first trial at the 
polls, in that the representatives voted as to who should sit in the 
Council for the coming year. The result was of obvious impor- 
tance to Phipps, who was at the head of the government, and to 
Mather, who was responsible for its inauguration. If his choices 
were rejected, it could mean nothing but that the new charter 
which he had endorsed and the men he nominated were not 
acceptable to the colonists, and his personal prestige must suffer 
accordingly. 

Under such circumstances we should expect few preachers to 
stick to abstract theology, and the practically minded Mather 
least of all. He began, to be sure, by outlining the general 
qualities which popular leaders should have. They should be 
pious, faithful, courageous, and wise. If such men were to be had, 
there would be good judges, and, as he said, ‘‘Religion and Refor- 
mation will be Encouraged” (p. 17). With this much general 
instruction, he becomes more specific. “This Informs and directs 
those in whose power it is to choose Counsellers what manner of 
persons they are to Elect,” he remarks, “namely such as were at 
the Beginning” (p. 18), in the palmy days when New England 
was the invincible stronghold of Puritan faith. Still practical, 
he continues, “It is very méet that persons Nominated for Coun- 
sellers should be men of Estate, and of some Port in the World” 
(p. 19). This doctrine is often condemned to-day, and usually 
rejected in practice, but there are still heretics who regard it as 
wise. 

Had Mather said no more, it would have been hard for us, or 
for any one of his hearers, to criticize him. But he proceeded, 
courageously at least, to touch one of the sorest spots in the 
people’s political consciousness. “Let me also say to you... that 
it will not be prudence in you (at this time especially) to propose 

55. “The Great Blessing of Primitive Counsellors. Discoursed in a Sermon, 
Preached in the Audience of the Governour, Council, and Representatives, of the 
Province of the Massachusets-Bay, in New-England. May 31st. 1693. Being the Day 


for the Election of Counsellors, in that Province... Bene agere & Male audire Regium 
est.” Boston, 1693. 


332 INCREASE MATHER 


such Assistants to the Governour as you cannot but know, that 
He cannot Accept of, and so to necessitate him to make use of his 
Negative Voice, when He has no desire to do it. And you cannot 
but know that... no Governour will take those into his Council, 
who are Malecontents, and do what in them is to make others to be 
Disaffected to the Government. No Governour can take such 
men into his Bosome”’ (p. 19). And, turning to Phipps, he went 
on: “It is a very great Power which the Divine Providence has 
put into your Hands, that you should have a Negative on the 
Elections of this Day. A Power which I confess, neither you nor 
anyone else should have had, if any Interest that I was capable to 
make, could have prevented it. You know Sir, that I humbly 
argued against it to the Kings Majesty, and to many of His chief 
Ministers of State. But I now see that God has ordered it to be 
as 1t is in Mercy to this his People; what it may be for the future, 
when the Ingratitude of an unthankful Murmuring Generation of 
men, shall have provoked the Most High... the Lord knoweth: 
but at present there is more good than hurt in it, and will be so 
long as there shall be a Governour whose Heart is Engaged to 
seek not Himself but the Publick good....No one that is Dis- 
affected to the best and highest Interest, or, to the Government 
of Their Majesties in England, or that is an Enemy to the Gov- 
ernment here, can be imposed on you” (pp. Ig, 20). 

Now, that a royal governor should have the right to veto the 
acts of the people’s representatives seemed to Mather and to his 
fellow citizens a sore blow to their rights. His enemies, and those 
hostile to the new charter, could find no surer weapon against him 
than to point out that he had accepted for New England this loss 
of privileges. It was true that he had fought bitterly against it, 
but now, in May, 1693, he stood up before the leaders of the state 
and defended the hated clause. 

Such a step was bold. Whether it was politically wise is open 
to question. In the first place, as Mather spoke, many a man in 
his audience must have felt that he was being threatened, in that 
he was assured that, if his vote did not fall on the side of Mather 
and Phipps, it would not count. And, secondly, those who re- 
garded the matter as one of political justice or injustice cannot 
have been impressed by Mather’s argument from present expe- 
diency, however kindly they felt toward the existing rulers. On 
the other hand, the governor’s right to veto elections was legally 
established, and not to use it would have been to fly directly in 


DEFENDING HIS FAITH S56 88 


the face of the letter and the spirit of his orders from the English 
authorities. The issue was one of independent colonial govern- 
ment versus partial independence subject always to royal control. 
Moderates, men who might have become Loyalists in 1776, 
believers in the colony as an English province, not an “Ameri- 
can”’ nation, certainly upheld Mather. Elisha Cooke and those 
who believed with him that the old charter, as construed in 
Boston, represented the last word in political theory, must have 
squirmed rebelliously as Mather spoke. It would have been easy 
to conciliate them without offending the friends of the new 
régime, but to do so would have been for Mather to keep silence 
on a matter about which he felt deeply. Zealous as he may have 
been in his desire to protect his own popularity, he was not enough 
of a politician to sacrifice his principles for votes. He believed 
that men favorable to Phipps’s government, with its sympathy ~“ 
for church and college, should be elected. Accordingly he spoke | 
out, and explained without reserve just how far the popular will 
would be heeded. Probably he was unwise, and made enemies 
where a more evasive method might have won allies; but cer- 
tainly he displayed his own independence without fear or favor. 
The election, as we have seen, largely confirmed the existing 
government, but some of Mather’s candidates were defeated, and 
a few of those avowedly in opposition to the result of his agency 
came into power. Their protests against the order of the day were 
sure to be heard. Among them was Elisha Cooke, the one man 
who centred about himself more and more each year Mather’s 
political adversaries and those to whom strict independence 
seemed the ideal. Cooke was, to be sure, by no means the most 
popular candidate, and stood not far from the foot of the list in re- 
spect to the number of votes he received, but that he was chosen 
at all was a straw showing the direction of the political wind.* 
He was so much of a “malcontent,” and so frankly a foe of 
Phipps, in that he opposed the measures by which the new gov- 
ernor came into power, that his presence in the Council was a 
serious danger. Phipps promptly vetoed his election, and, as 
promptly, the people, no doubt mindful of Mather’s remarks in 
his recent sermon, blamed not only the governor but his pastor.57 
56. MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 378. 
57. Sewall wrote, on June 8, 1693: “Mr. Danforth labours to bring Mr. Mather and 


Cook together, but I think in vain. Is great wrath about Mr. Cook’s being refused, 
and ’tis supposed Mr. Mather is the cause.” Jdid., p. 379. Cf. also, [did., pp. 378, 


379 n. 


334 INCREASE MATHER 


If Mather erred in defending the governor’s right to veto, the 
latter blundered equally in making use of it. If his course was 
advised by the Teacher of his church, Mather must share the 
blame of having bungled the situation. It would have been safer 
to put up with Cooke’s opposition in the Council than, by reject- 
ing him, to crystallize at one stroke the enmity to the new régime 
by supplying its foes with a ready-made “martyr” to what 
seemed to them to be royal “tyranny.” Cooke seems to have been 
a good politician and a believer in what he held to be colonial 
rights. He was not inclined to be diplomatic, and he knew how 
to fight. He was frank in his opposition to royal governors, and 
thus won the distinction of being turned out of office, not only by 
Phipps, but by another New Englander who later came to occupy 
the governor’s chair.5® 

With the election past, its result known, and Cooke refused 
by Phipps, it was clear that any forebodings Mather may have 
had as to the political hostility drawn upon him by his action 
in accepting the charter were entirely justified. Knowing this, 
he wrote his preface to the printed version of his election ser- 
mon. 

In it he recalls the happy days under the old charter, and 
admits the loss of some of its privileges, but he stoutly asserts 
that the new scheme of government still deserves support. He is 
chiefly concerned with his own vindication, and defends himself 
against talkers who chose to attack him. They proclaimed that 
he did nothing for the old charter, but he cogently reminds them 


of the chief events of his agency, and disposes of their accusa- _ 


tions. “The Whisperers that have endeavoured to make people 
believe that the Ministers who Subscribed”’ the letter testifying to 
his efforts in England “did afterward repent of their so doing 
are Forgers of Lies,” Mather declares. He alludes to warnings 
which he received in England from friends who assured him that 
the colonists would reward his work on their behalf with nothing 
but ingratitude. The events of 1693 gave him an inkling that the 
cynicism of his English acquaintances was well founded, and, as 
the years went by, he was made more and more aware of the 
wisdom of their prophecy. 

By 1699, although opposition to Mather was nearly at its 
_ height, he was once more called upon to preach the election ser- 


58. Palfrey, iv, 254. 





DEFENDING HIS FAITH Boa 


mon.°? The occasion was doubly significant in that a new gov- | 


ernor, the Earl of Bellomont, an Englishman, and one whose feel- 
ing toward the colonists was as yet untested, had recently arrived 
in Boston. Mather combined in his discourse elements clearly 
adapted to impress His Excellency with a rugged refusal to sacri- 
fice for any man on earth certain fundamental convictions as to 
truth. This last feature of his sermon he shows in his “This 
Honour of absolute Obedience is due to God alone. Inferiours 
are to obey their Superiours, but this Reserve always so far as 
shall consist with Obedience to the Will of God. If the Greatest 
man on Earth command a thing which God has forbidden he 


must not be obeyed. ... Or, if men should inhibit what God Com- _ 
mands, we must honour God by obeying him rather than them” | 


(p. 6). Here was the sort of talk Edward Randolph would have 
seized upon as seditious. One can imagine his delight in retailing 
it, with such embroidery as his prejudices dictated, to some chosen 
confidant among those of his friends most devoted to the doctrine 
of the divine right of kings. Mather’s speech certainly showed no 
truckling before royal authority. But he had more to do than 
assert his independence, for matters that touched his faith were at 
stake. The new governor was a Church of England man, and 
some recognition of this was but prudent. So we read: “A man 
whose heart honours God, respecteth every Good, Holy man as 
such. He does not respect men meerly because they are of his 
party, or particular perswasion in matters not Essential to Sal- 
vation. Suppose him to be Episcopalian, Congregational, Presby- 


terian, Antipedobaptist, in his Opinion, if he is a Godly man he “ 


honours Godliness wherever he seeth it”’ (p. 14). 

To the citizens Mather commented once more on the privileges 
they enjoyed under the new charter, but he had had, by 1699, 
enough experience of the popular temper to make him realize 
that references to the governor’s veto power were not safe. So 
he said no more than, “It is a great priviledge which you enjoy 
this day, that there can be no Civil Rulers over the Province (ex- 
cepting the Commander in Chief and his Deputy) but what 
the People by their Representatives shall approve of. No other 
Plantation enjoyes the like Priviledge. Nor should we, if the 

sg. “The Surest way to the Greatest Honour: Discoursed in a Sermon, Delivered 
In the Audience of His Excellency the Earl of Bellomont, Captain General and Governour 
in Chief, and of the Council, and Representatives of the General Assembly of the 


Province of the Massachusetts-Bay, Convened at Boston in New-England, May 31st. 
1699. Being the day for the Election of Counsellors in that Province.” Boston, 1699. 


336 INCREASE MATHER 


Senballats and Tobijahs amongst us could have had their desires” 
(p. 31). Who these “Senballats and Tobijahs”’ were, is obvious. 
That Mather referred thus to the implacable devotees of the old 
charter shows how little their opposition to his advocacy of the 
new order had shaken him. 

He had not forgotten the old days when kings less good than 
William had held the throne and he had been a foe of English 
monarchs. “Let no man give a Vote for any one that has the 
slavish heart of a Facodite in him” (p. 33). Other practical 
counsel he gave by exhortations to the clergy to emphasize 
Christ in their preaching, and by reminders that to deviate from 
the old religious “Platform” of New England would be to dis- 
honor God. He urged the representatives to consider Harvard’s 
situation, and, William being favorable and the time propitious, 
to take steps to secure a permanent establishment for the college. 
As for the voters, their best course, Mather declared, was to 
“Choose them that will Fear God & Honour the King” (p. 33). 


One sentence in the preface to the printed sermon sums up 


_ one of Mather’s sincerest beliefs. “Great men,” he wrote, “are 


happier than others, chiefly in this Respect, That they have 


greater Opportunities to Honour God.” His desire for high place 
in the church and in the respect of his fellow citizens cannot 
be ascribed to sordid ambition, if one accepts these words of his 
at their face value; and there is no reason to take them as any- 
thing but the expression of what he really thought. 

His books, written between 1692 and 1701, give many clues 
as to his position in these years. Remembering some of the views 
he expressed, we can see better why his fortunes fared as they 
did in his relation to public affairs. But to understand fully 
what happened, we must turn from printed pages to the daily 
politics of seventeenth-century Massachusetts. 


CHAPTER XIX 


THE FIRST DEFEAT 
OW inextricably Mather’s agency involved his fortunes with 


those of the new charter and its supporters, we have already 
seen, and we know that there was a party of some influence op- 
posed to his'views. Had Phipps been a stronger man, or had he 
been pursued by fewer foes abroad, he might have remained a 
popular governor, even though he was branded with what seemed 
to some of his compatriots the stigma of a royal appointment. 
But he was neither strong nor tactful. He lacked Dudley’s adroit- 
ness and Stoughton’s determination. His temper was that of a 
good seaman, and his bearing toward his subordinates was too 
often that of a captain toward his men. Moreover, whatever his 
character, the king’s use of the veto power was in itself enough 
to weaken his governor’s hold on the people. Wherever there were 
men loyal to William, with faith that Massachusetts could pros- 
per best by continuing as a colony, there were also many who 
were repelled by the acts of the individual who, for the moment, 
represented the sovereign. When Phipps cudgelled a man in the 
streets for doing no more than his duty, or assaulted the captain 
of an English ship; when he wrote official letters with a vocabu- 
lary better suited to the forecastle, or quarrelled with the repre- 
sentatives about a question which they believed involved their 
rights, he offended many citizens, however they felt toward Eng- 
land and her authority. And those others who, with a compla- 
cent disregard of practical considerations, dreamed of a govern- 
ment subject to no royal governor, were not likely to receive 
with welcome any act performed under the new charter. Every 
colonial law, passed in Boston and vetoed in London, added fuel 
to the blaze of hostility, fanned by Elisha Cooke and his zealous 
“old charter” brethren. Thus, when Phipps pursued a wise and 
farsighted policy against the French, he found critics even for 
this. 
In 1694 Sir William was recalled to England, to answer charges, 
and, he knew, to try to escape from the net woven about him by 


1. Cf. J. A. Doyle, The Puritan Colonies, ii, 405. 


338 INCREASE MATHER 


Joseph Dudley.? The latter was now a member of the Church 
of England, a political force, and an eager aspirant for the New 
England governorship. Inevitably he must have been against 
Phipps, and he became his most active foe in London. His 
intrigues were unnecessary, for Sir William died in February, 
1695. 

With the talents he had, he did his utmost for his country. 
He erred often, but he seems never to have allowed his personal 
interests to stand in the way of his country’s. His defects were of 
vision, and when he did see clearly, he was brave and vigorous. 
He paid dearly for his hot temper and his lack of tact. But, in 
spite of his faults, New Englanders were “generally sad”’3 at the 

news of his death, and Increase Mather hastened to preach on 
» “Merciful men taken away.” 4 

The relation between Mather and Phipps made it inevitable 
that they should stand or fall together. Every charge against 
the governor was, less directly, one against his pastor. Mather 
lost a large share of his political influence at one stroke, when the 
man he had made ruler of New England was recalled to answer 
accusations of misconduct in office. Phipps died before he came 
to trial, so that he remained unvindicated, nor could Mather 
be quite removed from the shadow. In the governor’s defeat 
alone there is enough to explain a greater reverse than that which 
came to Mather in 1701. That he kept as much influence as he | 
did, in spite of Phipps’s fall, argues for the strength of his position. 

Much of this lay in the fact that Stoughton, the lieutenant- 
governor, who succeeded Phipps, was, as his predecessor had been, 
a friend, sympathizer, and appointee of Mather. Richard Coote, 
Earl of Bellomont, was made governor of New England in 1696; 
but he did not come to Boston until 1699, and in the meanwhile 
Stoughton ruled. Mather, therefore, had friends in high place. 
Nor did Bellomont, when he arrived, fail to listen sometimes to 
the leader of the colonial church. 

In 1701 Stoughton served once more for a short time, but in 
that year both he and Bellomont died. The next governor was 
no other than Joseph Dudley. Cotton Mather aided him in 


2. J. A. Doyle, The Puritan Colonies, ii, 407, 408; MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 393; and 
Cal. State Papers, Am. and W.I., xiv, % 862. 

3. MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 404. 

4. For a quotation from this sermon, see C. Mather, Magnalia, book II, Appendix 
section 21, 





THE FIRST DEFEAT 339 


securing his appointment.’ How Increase felt toward his coming 
is not certain, but we know that until 1700 the elder Mather 
opposed his ambition. Dudley was a friend of Stoughton and a 
foe of Cooke. In his younger days he had been a Puritan. On the 
other hand, he was a bitter enemy of Phipps and therefore of 
the man who brought him to power. Probably, by 1701, Increase 
Mather had come to believe that Dudley had repented of his past 
errors. Indeed, there is a letter to Cotton Mather extant, in which 
Dudley explains and defends his course. It is very likely that the 
Mathers, with most New Englanders, preferred a native of the 
colony as their governor. But, whatever the reasons for his 
appointment, Dudley’s coming was a direct blow against the 
Cooke party and worked toward the continuing of the political ~ 
division which existed as early as 1692. 

Through all the public affairs of the time, Cotton Mather’s 
voice is heard. He flayed his adversaries with gusto, meddled 
in public concerns, appeared wherever Boston ministers met, and 
kept his pen busy in the service of his opinions.? Curiously in 
contrast is the impression one gets of his father. Sewall’s diary 
shows surprisingly little of the president during these years. 
Where the Mathers took sides in controversy, it was Cotton who 
spoke for their views. When Phipps sailed back to England, 
Increase did not go to see him off.* He seems to have been quite 
content to keep out of the active life of the town as much as 
might be. He was attacked by gout, he had much writing to do, 
and he had all the political campaigning he could manage in con- 
nection with Harvard. These were all good reasons for his keep- 
ing within doors. Cotton was quite capable of saying in public 
whatever needed to be said, and Increase, though he may have 
winced at his son’s occasional lapses from diplomatic speech, 
seems to have been quite content that the younger man should 
bear the heat of the day. 

To Harvard, however, Mather devoted not only much of his 
attention, but some of his old eager activity with voice and pen. 
He had returned from England with the advice that he should 
secure a charter for the college from an act of the local govern- 
ment. This he proceeded to do. The resulting document, passed 


5. Cf. J. A. Doyle, The Puritan Colonies, ti, 440 n. 

6. Cf. MHS Coll., Series 6, v, 91, iil, sorf. 

4. Cf. Ibid., Series 7, vol. vii, and Series 5, vol. v, passim. 
8. Idid., Series 5, Vv, 393. 


‘ 
Pave 


340 INCREASE MATHER 


under Phipps’s eyes, and before Mather’s political influence had 
been impaired, may fairly be taken as representing what the 
president saw as the ideal form of government for Harvard.? 

Its essential feature was that it put all authority in the hands 
of a corporation of ten, which was to be self-perpetuating, and 
subject to no supervision by “visitors” or ‘“‘overseers.”” Plainly, 
Mather felt that the only way to ensure Harvard’s remaining a 
nursery, not only of learning but of piety, was to put it into the 
hands of men who felt as he did, and to allow them to choose 
their successors. Without outside supervision, they could then 
continue the traditions of the college under no necessity of con- 
forming to any changes which might come in the views of its 
alumni or the community. Though undemocratic and narrow, 
such a scheme was a highly practical method of saving Harvard 
from changes in ideals or policy. With a wise Corporation, Har- 
vard would be well governed, and to Mather and his friends good 
government, or what they believed to be good, was far more 
important than any catering to the educational whims of the 
moment. We may give thanks that Harvard was saved from his 
plan, but it is hard to criticize Mather’s policy from the point of 
view of the interests he held dearest. Sound learning and Prot- 
estantism, particularly nonconformist Protestantism, were the 
essentials that he would have Harvard give to every pupil. The 
Congregational Church in the colony depended largely on its 
ability to draw well-trained ministers from the college. So long 
as his church, and the avoidance of what he saw as erroneous 
beliefs, were the greatest aims to be sought in education, Mather’s 
policy was practically sound. He erred in choosing it, it seems 
to us, because experience has shown that his object was less 
desirable than he supposed. He seems more wrong to us than he 
did to his contemporaries, because we have developed aims of 
our own, and theories of our own, which we label “liberality,” 
“democracy,” or what not, and we, in our turn, adore these as 
the highest things in life.t° 

The Corporation chosen under the new charter which, under 
the law, remained in force unless it was vetoed by the king with- 
in three years, was headed by Increase Mather as president.” 
With him were elected James Allen, Samuel Willard, Nehemiah 


g. See J. Quincy, History, i, 594 ff. 10. Cf. B. Wendell, Cotton Mather, p. 287. 
11. For this, and the whole following account of the negotiations for a college char- 
ter, see J. Quincy, History, vol.i. I have added footnotes and definite references only 


THE FIRST DEFEAT 341 


Hobart, Nathaniel Gookin, Cotton Mather, John Leverett, 
William Brattle, Nehemiah Walter, and the treasurer, John 
Richards. Hobart refused to serve, and in his place Charles 
Morton was chosen. The board included, then, the minister of 
the First Church in Boston, the two leaders of the Second 
Church there, and the ministers of Cambridge and Charlestown. 
The two tutors, upon whom the administration had devolved 
during Mather’s absence, were also chosen, and the former treas- 
urer retained his office. All these men were Congregationalists, 
and all were good citizens. For the moment Harvard seemed 
likely to fare well at their hands. 

The new charter gave the Corporation the right to confer 
higher degrees, and they promptly voted to Brattle and Leverett 
Bachelorships in Divinity. Upon Mather they conferred the 
title of Doctor of Divinity. All three men deserved honors, 
Leverett and Brattle for their faithful service, and Mather for 
his work as president and for his achievement in broader fields. 

Such “‘self-gratification”’ on the part of the Corporation was 
not only innocent but recognized real distinction. None the less, 
no honor could come to Mather without arousing his political 
opponents. Thus we find in a letter to England, “Sir William and 
Council have given the College a charter, with power to receive 
gifts and confer degrees. They are proceeding to create Mather 
a doctor of divinity, which by some misunderstanding is to be 
obstructed. The deputies too are so displeased since Cooke’s 
arrival that they will allow him [Mather] no salary unless he be 
resident and would have another man chosen.” ” 

There is confirmation here of what might easily be surmised 
on other grounds. When Cooke, Mather’s opponent during 
the agency, came home, “misunderstanding,” discontent with 
the president, and a movement to replace him, all began. 
Cooke knew, as Randolph did, how influential a political agency. 
the college might become. He could not easily stomach having. 
the man whose stand on public questions he combatted from high 
and conscientious motives remain at the head of higher educa- 
tion in Massachusetts. So he sought for the weak spot in Mather’s 
armor, and found it in his divided allegiance between his church 
and the college. Then, by advocating a law that the president of 


when I disagree with Quincy, when there is more information to add, or when some 
particular document is referred to. 


12. Cal. State Papers, Am. and W.1., xiv, ® 214 (March 23, 1693). 


342 INCREASE MATHER 


Harvard must live in Cambridge, Mather’s foes took the readiest 
means of putting obstacles in the way of his keeping his office. 
Probably it was better that the college should have a resident 
chief executive, but the letter we have quoted and the events of 
1701 prove that not only high zeal for correct collegiate adminis- 
tration, but also certain definite political motives, lay back of the 
effort to require Mather’s removal to the college or his retire- 
ment from the presidency. To ask him to leave Boston and one 
of the leading churches of New England, to wrestle with the 
daily conduct of what was still a small and struggling school, 
was to demand more than he or any other active divine was likely 
to grant. Should he refuse, Cooke’s party could force his resig- 
nation. Should he accept, he would be less able to impose his 
will on the government in Boston, and his enemies would gain. 
Should he give up the control of Harvard, there would be a chance 
that it might be brought to train voters for Cooke. 
So, for nearly ten years, the college was the centre of a battle. 
Against Mather were ranged his political enemies and, later, 
those who disagreed with him in ecclesiastical matters. Probably 
there joined with these some who resented what seemed to them 
to be the Mathers’ too great dominance in the colony. Mather’s 
task was to keep his position and prestige without sacrificing the 
principles he believed should govern church and state. The odds 
were too great. for him, and, rather than compromise, he ac- 
cepted the one great defeat of his life. eRe 
Before we look at this controversy, we may glance at one or two 
bits of evidence bearing on his administration of Harvard. That 
he was a good president, and that the college developed under 
him, is admitted even by those who dislike his attitude on some 
other matters." We know from his diaries that he gave much 
time and thought to his duties and spent many days in going to 
and from Cambridge, then, of course, separated from Boston by 
a far greater journey than it is to-day. Seven or eight miles, on 
horseback, in all sorts of weather, was no slight undertaking; but 
such obstacles did not deter him. If he harangued the students 
on the dangers of Arminianism, he also took up subjects of broader 
interest. He advocated a “/iberal mode of philosophizing, instead 
of floating about from school to school, as if you were literally 
Peripatetics.”” He denounced Aristotle, declaring, “Certainly an 
- imp would be a fine interpreter of Aristotle!’ But he was careful 


13. Cf. J. Quincy, History, i, 116, 117. 


THE FIRST DEFEAT 343 


to add: “You, who are accustomed to philosophize in a /iberal 
spirit, are pledged to the formulas of no master: and you should 
moreover remember that one truly golden sentiment of Aristotle: 
‘Find a friend in Plato, a friend in Socrates’ (and I say, a friend in , 
Aristotle); but be sure, above all, to find a friend in truth.’’ No 
advocate of intellectual freedom ever uttered a broader doctrine.” 

Nor did he try ever to limit Harvard’s curriculum to theology. 
He knew that New England must have not only ministers, but 
physicians, and that she,could not afford to exclude all but 
divinity. In 1698 we find a student presenting a Commencement 
thesis on the question whether comets are meteors.s Under 
Mather’s guidance the library bought scientific books and books 
of general scope.%* Knowing his own broad interests, it is not 
hard for us to guess that the student who thirsted for a taste of 
astronomy, of chemistry, medicine, or experimentation in “‘natu- 
ral philosophy,” got what he sought. 

Mather believed that the college had a duty toward historical 
research, especially when such studies might serve to support 
theological tenets. Such a duty could be performed in part by a 
further recording of the observed phenomena of nature. With 
exactly the same purpose which Mather had in writing his 
“Illustrious Providences,” he, with the Corporation and at the 
request of the ministers’ association,’? put out in the name of the 
college “Proposals” asking for accounts of “unusual accidents, 
in the heaven, or earth, or water: all wonderful de/iverances of the 
distressed: mercies to the Godly; judgments on the wicked; and 
more glorious fulfilment of either the promises or the threatnings 
in the Scriptures of truth; with apparitions, possessions, inchant- 
ments, and all extraordinary things wherein the existence and 
agency of the invisible world is more sensibly demonstrated.” 
The narratives are to be “written accounts .. . well attested with 
credible and sufficient witnesses.” * Once more, experience was 
to support theological doctrines, and once more the method was 
essentially scientific. 

Any mention of the “invisible world” made by a Mather has 
always excited certain historians to forget all else in their zeal to 
adorn more thoroughly the strange lay figure they have erected 

14. C. Mather, Magnalia, book IV, part i, section 7. 

15. MHS Coll., Series 2, iv, 93n. 

16. Harv. Rec., p. 358. 


T78MAS Proc.,.Xvil;'271. 
18. C. Mather, Magnalia, book VI, Introduction. 


344 INCREASE MATHER 


to represent either Increase or his son. In their eyes both men 
strove to encourage belief in witches; the younger, at least, 
labored to spread popular excitement and persecution, and both 
would rather spy out a witch than inherit a fortune. Never is 
this fantasy more futile than when it is applied to the “ Propo- 
sals’’ of the Harvard Corporation in 1694. Nowhere does the 
preservation of the myth require more resolute closing of one’s 
eyes to the known facts and the existing records. 

To cite but one example, it has been said that Increase Mather 
“used his position as President of Harvard College”’ in “the nefa- 
rious business” of trying “‘to engage the superstitious and reck- 
less.” *9 This is flatly contradicted, of course, by the ‘ Proposals” 
themselves. They ask for narratives of apparitions and the like 
only as a part of a design which included everything else that 
was novel or unusual, or, as the Puritans put it, revealed God’s 

{wondrous works. Far from seeking to “engage” superstition, 
‘the Corporation asked for nothing except what could be sup- 
“ported by good witnesses. Indeed, a sufficient answer to the quo- 
‘tation given above is found in the fact that Mather was not the 
only signer of the “Proposals,” and that among those who 
approved the plan was one whom our critic of the Mathers de- 
clares to have been enlightened in regard to witchcraft! 2° It is 
not enough to say that the document merely “purported” to 
represent the Corporation, for we have definite evidence that they 
signed it." Only when we read the “Proposals” with the omis- 
sion of all but one clause, forget all we know of Increase Mather’s 
attitude during the witchcraft excitement, and believe that he 
secured for a document urging credulity and superstition the 
signature of a man who is said to have been his courageous 
opponent in such matters, can we see the document as any- 
_ thing but what it was. If we prefer to abide by the obvious facts, 
there is nothing more in the “Proposals” than an eftort to secure 
“materials for history and theology. Moreover, these materials 
were acceptable only when they were vouched for by good wit- 
nesses. The veriest child with a desire to encourage superstition 

19. J. Winsor, The Literature of Witchcraft, Pera ens 

20. The “Proposals” were signed by both Mathers, by Allen, Morton, Walter, 
Leverett, William Brattle, and Willard. William was the brother of Thomas Brattle, 
and his ally on other questions, and Willard is praised by Winsor for his “right-mind- 
edness”! Idid., p. 363. 

21. MHS Proc., xvii, 271, entry for 1694, March 4. Quincy (History, i, 62), sug- 
gests that the “‘Proposals” only “purported” to be signed by the Corporation. 


THE FIRST DEFEAT 345 


could turn out a plan which would serve his ends better than the 
sheet the Corporation issued. The “Proposals” were framed by 
men who knew what they wanted and asked for it, with explicit 
directions as to how it was to be presented. It has been reserved 
for later history to lose sight of the truth in the interests of 
prejudice. 

As for details of his administration, Mather kept the old college 
rules in use.” The Bachelors of Arts were ordered to debate 
philosophical questions once each fortnight, and the Masters 
were to treat theological problems at such times as the President 
appointed. In 1693 Richards resigned, and in his place no 
other than Thomas Brattle was elected treasurer.24 So the two 
Mathers and their friends chose to dignify by high office a man 
who is called to-day the greatest of the sceptics as to witchcraft 
in 1692. The choice was natural, for Brattle was a citizen of 
standing; but it would be hard to explain if one accepted for a 
moment the idea that the Mathers differed from the new treasurer 
as to the power of Satan. We have Brattle’s testimony that they 
agreed with him; and although he came later to oppose them on 
other grounds}-so far as “the invisible world” was concerned, he 
was a Matherian. 

Recordedwith equal gravity is the vote forbidding ‘“‘Plum- 
Cake” at Commencement; but one soon meets matters of more 
importance in the appearance of notes of a project to develop the 
college on the material side by new building.*s This plan had 
already been discussed by the “Cambridge Association.” © The 
first practical step seems to have been a vote to take down the 
old “Indian Colledge,” which was, presumably, out of repair. 
There is also a vote appointing a committee to discuss with 
Stoughton his plan to build an “additional building to ye 


Colledg.” 27 Thence came the first “Stoughton Hall,” and the. 


name of its successor, which still stands. 

Within the Corporation Mather seems to have found little 
of the opposition which he had to contend with outside. While 
he was supported in the meetings of the Fellows, votes of those 
who sat in the Town-house were less favorable to him. As early 
as December 2, 1693, the General Court ruled that he should 


Pmt Aloe COs De 939% 24. Ibid., pp. 341, 342. 
23. Lbid., p. 340. 25 l0id.. D343; 

26. MHS Proc., xvii, 270 (Oct. 2, 1693). 

OF. 1 ar0y Recs PPs13575°355- 


ff 


346 INCREASE MATHER 


reside at Harvard. To this he paid no attention. On June 5, 
1695, the representatives passed a vote even more explicit in 
its terms. If Mather would go to Cambridge, he was to have a 
salary of one hundred and fifty pounds a year, but if he declined, 
another president was to be sought. 

The Council, where Mather’s appointees were still a majority, 
seems not to have concurred in either of the votes just mentioned. 
Mather was, none the less, awake to the feeling of the legislators, 
and he inclined to give up the presidency. On August ¢ he told 
the Corporation that he wished to serve no longer and asked them 
to look for his successor; but they voted in entirely unambiguous 
terms to request him to stay, “not too deeply resenting the mat- 
ters of discouragement laid before him.” They gave material 
proof of their good will in the form of a donation of seventy 
pounds, and money with which he might buy a horse. 

Then came the news that King William had refused his con- 
sent to the college charter of 1692.7 The reason given was that 
no provision had been made for the sovereign and his governor 
to have visitatorial power.?® The objection was reasonable, for 
no monarch was likely to approve the removal of the one great 
educational force in an important colony from all control by the 
royal government. 

Meanwhile Mather had been impressed by a conviction that 
the Lord demanded his return to England, to serve Him there. 
This he regarded as “a special faith,” and his diary is full of his 
spiritual debating of it.3° We may easily scoff at this, saying that 


he was ambitious to become once more the honored agent of the — 


colony. What was more natural than that, with such selfish 
desires, he should cheat himself into a belief that God called him 
to what he secretly craved? Such a view does not quite meet the 
facts. Mather’s diaries were obviously not written for publica- 
tion. He wrote them in very brief notes, setting down his doings 
without regard to their importance, and he gave much space to 
mentioning his sins. His autobiography he prepared for his 
children’s eyes, and there, if one wills, he may have written for 

28. Cf. Cal. State Papers, Am. and W. I., xiv, ¥1754, 1874. 

29. Ibid., * 874. 

30. See Autobiography; MS. Diary (some extracts from which are in Quincy, His- 
tory, 1, 475ff.); MHS Coll., Series 7, vol. vii (Quincy, History, i, 482ff., gives extracts); 
and Parentator, pp. 192ff. 


It is well to remember, in using Quincy’s extracts, that they are “selections” from 
the diary, and adapted to the author’s theory as to Mather’s motives. 





THE FIRST DEFEAT 347 


posterity. If it were only there that he wrote of his conviction 
that God “called” him to return to England, we might ascribe 
his remarks to a desire to veil hypocritically his own ambition; 
but when we find his hastily scrawled diaries full of his per- 
plexities as to the meaning of what seemed to him to be God’s 
exhortations to service in London, we must admit that they repre- 
sented something very real to him and that, if they but expressed 
his own secret desires, he deceived himself unconsciously and 
sincerely.3! 

England had always called him. He had left it reluctantly in 
1662, and continued for years thereafter to dream of returning 
to the mother country. In 1688 his chance came, and he once 
more saw London. Four years there quickened the old love, and 
for the rest of his life he never forgot England’s charms. Intel- 
lectually and socially there were opportunities better suited to 
the range of his nature than any offered by the colony. Even 
leaving aside such personal motives, he had thrown himself 
heartily into his diplomatic mission and was intensely eager that 
the new charter should succeed. When it was attacked and he 
was criticized, he would have been less than human had he not 
longed to try his hand once more in an effort to secure the changes 
the people desired. At the same time, his family were in Boston, 
he was growing old, and the North Atlantic was no less stormy 
than in his father’s time. Sacrifice as well as self-gratification 
was involved in any plan to go to London, and, no doubt, he 
meant what he said when he called the defeat of his scheme for a 
new agency a “happy disappointment.” 3 

Bits of his diary have been held up as hypocritical. Such inter- 
pretation is possible only if one is content to accept a part of 
what he wrote as expressing his feeling and the rest as mere 
striving for effect. To read his diary thus, one must select from 
his words in accordance with a preconceived idea of his character, 
and an idea which does not agree with the facts of his life. No- 
where else did his selfish ambition run counter to the best in- 
terests of his church and the state. Nowhere else do we find him 
eager for controversy for its own sake or desirous of forcing his 
own will upon the people except in so far as his own will was 

31. On the whole question of the reading of the diaries, cf. Quincy’s remarks as to 
Mather in these years, in vol. i of his History, and, for the other side, which seems better 
founded in justice, see Enoch Pond, The Lives of Increase Mather and Sir William 


Phipps, pp. 178ff., and C. Robbins, History, pp. §9-63. 
32. Autobiography. 


348 INCREASE MATHER 


that of the religious and civil leaders. Even if his whole nature 
had altered in 1695, the fact still remains that the call he believed 
he heard demanding his return to England was not an unqualified 
delight to him. Instead, it was the source of many hours spent 
in introspective questioning as to where his duty lay. 

However he felt, his political enemies were not likely to bid 
him “God speed” on a new voyage to England. Rumors ran 
through Boston streets that Cooke and Oakes had declared that, 
but for Mather, the old charter might have been saved, and that 
he had betrayed the country. Characteristically he challenged 
them directly as to their reported statement, which they promptly 
denied.3* None the less, the very existence of such gossip showed 
the current of opinion. 

With the rejection of the college charter of 1692, the need for 
an agency became more apparent. Though Stoughton, as acting 
governor, bade the officers. of Harvard continue their adminis- 
tration as of yore, no one was content with such a makeshift. 
On September 5, 1696, Mather was ‘‘again discoursed of” as an 
agent to England. On December eleventh he “did acquaint” the 
representatives with his “purpose of undertaking a Voyage for 
FE... . (if ye Ld will) in order to ye obtaining of a govt settlement 
for ye Colledge.’ Later in the month, he records that the Cor- 
poration were eager to have him go, but his church was unwilling 
_ to release him. 

In November began a new attempt to pass a charter for Har- 
vard. Those who believed in New England’s right to govern 
herself, with the minimum of attention to the king, were eager 
to incorporate the college on a basis that they decided upon, not 
by a patent secured from William III by one or two diplomatic 
emissaries. This had been Mather’s own feeling when, in Eng- 
land, he chose to leave Harvard’s problems to be solved by 
an act of the colonists’ representatives rather than to try to 
secure a charter by his personal influence at court. 

The new plan for the college contained few essential differences 
from that proposed in 1692. To it Allen, Willard, and both 
Mathers promptly objected. They protested against its requiring 
the chief officer of the college to live in Cambridge, declaring 

33- MS. Diary, 1693, June 30, “discourse wt dr. Cooke & Oakes. yy both denied yt 
ever yy said yt yy could have got ye old charter agn if it had not bin for me, or yt I had 
betrayed ye countrey. I declared myselfe willing to forgive ye wrong yy had done to 


me.” Quincy History (i, 475) gives his version of this diary entry. 
34. MS, Diary, 1696, Sept. 5, Dec. 11, Dec. 28. 


THE FIRST DEFEAT 349 


that this would render Harvard “incapable of action.” This was, 
of course, a perfectly explicit notice that the president would 
resign rather than leave Boston. One or two minor clauses were 
also objected to, and the ministers finally declared that “the 
visitation” by the Governor and Council “is such as to make it 
extremely probable, that the act will not only miss of the Royal 
approbation, but also give offense by its variation from the 
direction of the Lords of the Council; which we intimate not from 
our dislike of the thing, but from our concern to have no part in 
any thing that may renew or prolong the unsettlement of the 
College.” And “for such causes” they prayed “to be excused’”’ 
from being named as officers of Harvard in the new draft for its 
government. In this last protest Willard, Mather, and the rest 
were entirely right. The royal authorities had made quite 
definite their insistence that the supervisory power should be 
vested in the king and his governor. The legislators were obsti- 
nately determined to include the Council, and highly indignant at 
criticism of their course; but obstinacy and anger could not drive 
English statesmen to change what they regarded as a necessary 
principle. 

The 1696 charter came to nothing, and a new one was framed 
in 1697. Quincy says that it was drawn up by Mather. However 
this may be, the Council, in acting upon it, tried to remove 
Leverett from office in the Corporation. Sewall writes: “This 
day Mr. Leverett was by the Council denied to be of the Cor-. 
poration for the College.” Now, if Mather drew up the bill, | 
he must have included Leverett’s name. If this was the case, it 
speaks well for his liberality in appointing to office a man who 
was now known to be an ally of those who were arrayed against 
him in church matters. Of course, the Council may have been 
under the president’s influence, but, as the record stands, all we 
can be sure of is that it was their act, not his, which aimed 
directly at Leverett’s deposition. 

The representatives restored Leverett’s name. Once the new 
charter was passed, the Corporation pushed their plan to have 
Mather sent to England to secure the king’s consent to what had 
been done. Their first petition was voted down by the repre- 
sentatives, and a second met the same fate. Quincy considers it 
“worthy of notice’ that neither of “the petitions... signed by 
Mather, and stated to be ‘by unanimous consent’ appears to 
have been acted upon by the Corporation. There is no record 


350 INCREASE MATHER 


of any meeting on either of the days mentioned in them.” 3 
This is true, but hardly “worthy of notice,” since the college 
records as we have them are not complete, and, in the case of the 
first petition, there is an entry in Mather’s diary, for June 7, 
the date given on the document, saying, “ye Corporation unani- 
mously dsired me to undertake a voyage for E. on ye colledges 
account.” 36 

Mather’s enemies were hard at work. Robert Calef, whatever 
his motives were, was belaboring Cotton Mather for his associa- 
tion with the witchcraft trials and declaiming against Increase’s 
deeds during his agency. The one thing that is absolutely certain 
as to Mather’s whole connection with Harvard is that he never 
sought office there, simply as an office or a public distinction. 
He refused the presidency more than once, had tried to resign, 
was prepared to withdraw rather than move to Cambridge, and 
now, exposed to criticism from many sides, he called a special 
Corporation meeting in order that he might “(wth ye Lords 
Leave) ... Resign” his “Relation to ye Colledge.” 37 If we take 
his remarks as to his desire to go to England at their face value, 
it is no less than just to remember also the clear proofs he gives 
as to his lack of vanity and ambition in connection with his place 
at Harvard. So he wrote: “the Ld pvide & supply ye Colledge 
ws a better yn I am pdoning my many defects & yt I have done 
no more good for ye poore Colledge.”’ 38 

The Corporation meeting was duly held, but the Fellows once 
more prevailed on Mather to remain in office, declaring that, now 


that a new governor was coming, there was a chance for a more | 


hopeful turn of affairs. Mather stayed reluctantly, and diffi- 
culties promptly arose, reflecting, probably, a division already 
apparent in church councils. It was at this time that the presi- 
dent quarrelled with Willard; but, as we have seen, their friend- 
ship was not broken. Once more Mather tried to resign, but there 
was no quorum at the next Corporation meeting. After it he 
apparently decided to continue in office and seems to have been 
confident that he was to be sent to London. This hope encouraged 
him to remain. 

In March he wrote to Blathwayt saying: “I suppose I had been 

35. Quincy, History, i, 91. 

36. MS. Diary, 1697, June 7. Moreover, Cal. State Papers, Am. and W.I.,xvi, 570, 
shows that the legislature had no doubts as to the authenticity of the other petition, 


37: MS. Diary, 1697, Aug. 7, and Quincy, History, i, 478. 
38. Ibid. 





| 
} 
‘ 
| 


THE FIRST DEFEAT 351 


with you before this; but that it is necessary, that the Gover- 
nour should arrive before my Going... that so I may have his 
Countenance and Concurrence in what I am to sollicit for... I 
leave only to entreat, that you would please to Improve your 
Interest at Court, that the Law for Incorporating Harvard- 
Colledge, which was sent over this Winter, may not come under 
Consideration until such Time, as I can be with you, which I hope 
may be in July or August next.” 39 This can be read either as a 
sly bit of secret diplomacy, showing that Mather did not sin- 
cerely favor the 1697 charter as passed in the colony, or as a 
prudent measure to prevent its being refused before its friends 
could be heard.4° Since it contained unaltered the clause which 
had caused the rejection of two earlier charters, it certainly 
needed defence if 1t was to pass. If Mather drew it up, as we are 
told he did, there can have been no motive for his trying secretly 
to defeat it. Probably his letter represented no more than an 
attempt to prevent the final rejection of the bill before he could 
get to London. 

The Corporation continued to favor his agency. The new gov- 
ernor, Bellomont, arrived in New York in April, and the Fellows 
promptly sent to him an address asking that his influence be used 
to encourage Mather’s being sent. To this the governor replied 
that the college charter as it stood would not pass, and that the 
sending of an agent would be helpful. The Assembly proceeded to 
consider the matter, but Mather’s enemies were still vociferous. 
One of them declared that he deserved a year’s imprisonment. 
Whereupon he wrote in his diary, “Is ys my Reward for taking 
so much pains to serve & save N. E.?” # 


39. Col. Soc. Pub., xix, 149. Cf. also, Acts and Resolves, i, 308. 

40. For the adverse view, cf. Acts and Resolves, vii, 608, 609. The fact that Ashurst’s 
letter (Idid., 609) was written after Mather wrote Blathwayt shows that Mather could 
not have known the charter was likely to succeed, at the time he wrote. And it is worth 
remembering that his request for delaying action on the bill was not heeded, and that 
the bill failed! In other words, his fears as to its passage were entirely justified, and 
Ashurst’s opinion is beside the point. As to Mather’s “‘disingenuousness” (Ldid., 609), 
I fail to see where it lies. He told Bellomont just what he told Blathwayt, that is, that 
he waited for the former’s arrival before going to England. Moreover, one remembers, 
he remained in office because he knew a new governor was coming. It seems clear that 
Mather planned to go to England; that, probably, he wished to delay action on the 
bill until he arrived, in order that he might help to save it; and, finally, that there is no 
evidence that he opposed its passage. Also, as stated in the text, Mather is said to 
have drawn up the very bill which, we are asked to believe, he hoped to defeat! 

41. MS. Diary, 1698, June 28. The entry is reprinted, with changes, in Quincy, 
History, 1, 479, 480. 


be 


352 INCREASE MATHER 


The legislators refused Mather’s plan, and again voted that he 
should live at the college. If he would consent, he was to have a 
salary of two hundred pounds a year. He refused, pointing out 
the unsettled legal status of Harvard, the claims of his church, 
and, with other objections, insisting that he could not give up 
preaching, which he “preferred before the gold and silver of the 
West Indies.” 

His formal answer he delivered in a letter to Stoughton. He 
rehearses his aversion to moving to Cambridge, speaks of his 
longing for England, and of the criticism heaped upon him by 
those who believed his policy was dictated by this desire. There- 
fore he told Stoughton that he would resign. There is no reason 
to doubt that he meant what he said, although his enemies 
declared his promise to give up office “was but a flourish.” If so, 
it was a flourish which might have been disastrous. Insistence 
on the law, or Stoughton’s advocacy of some other good divine, 
was all that was needed to defeat Mather, and this, of course, 
he knew. He would stay at Harvard as long as he could with- 


“out giving up what seemed to him to be greater chances for 
- usefulness. 


Meanwhile the 1697 charter had been refused in England, again 
because the king and governor were not made “‘visitors”’ of the 
college.” The colonial government’s policy had been given a 
thorough trial and had been defeated. Mather’s plan for an 
agency had not been tried at all, but was voted down by his 
enemies. Harvard still had no legal basis for its administration. 

In this apparent impasse, Stoughton did not accept Mather’s 
resignation, and the president now decided to make an effort to 
meet the wishes of the voters. He was the more ready to make 
some sacrifice in order to remain in office, probably, because the 
tendency toward changes in the church gained strength every day, 
so that orthodoxy in the college seemed more necessary than ever. 
But when Mather asked his church to allow him to move to 
Cambridge, they promptly refused their consent. None the less, 
on the twenty-third of the same month, he told the Corporation 

42. The Council of Trade and Plantations reported to the Lord Justices, November 
24, 1698: “An Act to incorporate Harvard College was formerly repealed because no 
power was reserved to the King to appoint visitors, and it was intimated that the Act 
would be passed if a clause were added giving a power of visitation to the King and to 
the Governor of the Province. Now the present Act to incorporate the College vests the 


power of visitation in the Governor and Council, and we therefore recommend that it 
be repealed.” Cal. State Papers, Am. and W. I., xvi, % 1008. Cf. also, Ibid., xvii, #73. 


THE FIRST DEFEAT 353 


and the Council that, if his wife agreed and unless news from 
England prevented, he would come to live at Harvard. 

At this juncture Bellomont arrived, with the advice that an 
address should be sent to the king, asking for a royal charter for 
the college. The representatives proceeded to draw up new sug- 
gestions for incorporating Harvard. These differed from the pre- 
vious schemes in only two important features. One was that, at 
last, the visitatorial power was reserved to the king and governor. 
This was tempered for colonial consumption by a provision that 
five members of the Council should at all times be, ex officio, 
Fellows of Harvard.*® The other innovation was the introduction 
of a clause restricting the right to hold office at the college to 
those men who were Presbyterians or Congregationalists, and, 
moreover, followers of the traditional orthodox policy. 

This last requirement was an obvious attempt to preserve the 
sectarianism of Harvard. Nothing more illiberal can be imagined 
to-day, but it is worth while to remember that the college was 
founded as a Congregational school, and no idea of its being domi- 
nated by any other sect was by any means generally in favor 
among its alumni. To-day, with our theories of “national,” 
“democratic”? universities, sectarian restrictions savor of nar- 
rowness. Yet we should hardly blame the trustees of a theological 
seminary, or a school founded by one church, for refusing to elect 
officers representing opinions at variance with those for the teach- 
ing of which these institutions were founded. There is room to 
criticize the Mathers, Allen, Torrey, Willard, John Danforth, 
Peter Thacher, and Benjamin Wadsworth for their failure to 
grasp a vision of the college’s future greater than any its founders 
had seen, but, however limited their foresight, they were faithful 
to what they conceived as the traditional ideals of Harvard. 
To-day we construe her traditions differently, but even so we 
cannot deny that Mather and the other ministers took a stand 
which was historically sound. 

They introduced the proposal that the college officers should 
always be orthodox, but it is only fair to remember that the 
people’s representatives stood solidly with them. The governor 

43. Cf. here a letter of John Danforth, in MHS Coll., Series 5, 1, 448, who writes: 
“As for the Colledge, if ye present Act for its incorporation should be repeald in Eng- 
land, the Hon>!* Gentlemen of y® Councill are likely to be made members of y° Cor- 
poration in y® next Act y* may incorporate it.” The rest of the letter refers to the 


writer’s approval of Mather’s being sent as agent, to Ashurst’s and Bellomont’s endorse- 
ment of the same plan, and to the “Generall Court’s” refusal to consent. 


354 INCREASE MATHER 


refused to accept any bill containing a religious restriction, not 
because he had achieved a modern idea of non-sectarian educa- 
tion, but because the suggested clause excluded from office 
members of his own church. But, in the face of his expressed 
opinion, the Council refused to omit the provision which ensured 
Harvard’s continuing as the abiding place of the strict New Eng- 
land type of nonconformity.*5 

Now we have seen that the Council was, at other times, by no 
means eager to support Mather, and repeatedly opposed what 
they knew he desired. When it came to a question of religious 
conservatism, however, they joined forces with him. This is 
worth remembering, since it makes plain that the issue between 
Mather and his political antagonists was not one of liberality 
against reaction. Cooke and his followers were “‘old charter” 
men, adherents of the old order, under which Congregationalism 
_ had been far more powerful than under the system of govern- 
_ ment supported by Mather. His foes did not combat him because 
_ he was conservative as to church polity, but because he had 
_ accepted and favored the trial of a régime in which royal author- 
' ity was more effectively exercised than before. Forgetful of this, 
some writers have tried to show that Mather’s desire that the 
king and governor, not the governor and Council, should be 
visitors, was due to his yearning to protect Harvard’s orthodoxy. 
Bellomont saw more clearly. One of his letters explains that the 
inclusion of the Council as a supervisory body was intended, not 
to favor religious liberty at the college, but to protect Congre- 
gationalism against a possibly hostile governor and king. In 
opposing the Council’s desire to exert some control over Harvard, 
Mather had no religious motives, but simply a very practical 
realization of the futility of trying to enact what the king was 

44. Bellomont wrote: “I refused my assent to the Bill for Incorporation of the 
College, therefore, as it had already been twice rejected, and because of a clause exclud- 
ing absolutely all members of the Church of England from the government of the 
College and consequently”’ (although this does not seem to have followed necessarily) 
“from being members thereof.” Cal. State Papers, Am. and W. I., xvii, ¥ 746. 

45. Acts and Resolves, 1,308. Cf. also, Cal. State Papers, Am. and W.I., xvii, % 657. 

46, Bellomont wrote: “The General Assembly do not desire there should be any 
clause in the Charter exclusive of Members of the Church of England, but they desire 
the power of visitation may be lodged in the Governor and Council, and not in the 
Governor singly, because, as this country is very remote from England, a Governor that 
were a violent man and an enemy to their religion might probably vex and disturb the 
whole by an attempt upon their College, in order to innovate in matters of discipline or 


religion, and that before they could make their complaint to the King, and be relieved 
against such a Governor.” Cal. State Papers, Am. and W.1., xviii, ¥ 641. 


THE FIRST DEFEAT SoG 


sure to veto. Moreover, the civil authorities proved that they 
agreed with him, when it came to preserving sectarian education. 
If a college should guide its policy by the will of the community 
and its alumni, what the ministers tried to do was right. When 
we are moved to objurgate Mather and his friends for their failure 
to abandon the traditions established by the founders and sup- 
ported by the graduates of Harvard, and their failure to adopt 
an ideal of nonsectarianism not commonly accepted for genera- 
tions after 1699, it is wholesome to remember that with them must 
be admonished the voters of Massachusetts and their represen- 
tatives. In such company Mather, Willard, and the rest need 
not fear our censure for their reluctance to adopt standards which 
gained prominence a century or more after they were in their 
graves. | 

Bellomont’s veto shipwrecked the 1699 charter plan. The 
Council, on June 11, 1700, voted to ask the king for a “royal 
charter of privileges”; but the representatives insisted that the 
patent should be framed in Boston. It was agreed that they 
should nominate the college officers, subject to the approval of 
the Council. The latter was to have visitatorial power, and 
Bellomont’s letters show that this provision was regarded as a 
guarantee of orthodoxy and that he had altered his views to accept 
the colonists’ position.47 

The Council and the representatives left out of office the two 
Brattles and John Leverett, who were now openly advocating 
innovations in church discipline and fighting Mather with vigor- 
ous and continued attacks. He believed such unruly young men 
had no place in the college Corporation. That the legislators 
fell in with his view, in spite of their disagreement on other points, 
shows that they and their constituents had little use for what 
seemed the noisy radicalism of the time.** 

At the same time that they joined him in selecting the most 
orthodox of leaders for Harvard, the Council and representatives 
gave a death-blow to his hopes of being sent to England. Instead 
of turning to him, they gave the task of seeking royal favor for 
Harvard to Bellomont. With his death ended the long struggle 
to secure a charter for the college. 


The colonists had tried hard to gain their dearly longed-for 


47. Cal. State Papers, Am. and W.I., xvii, 641. 
48. Bellomont believed Mather’s influence was responsible for keeping Brattle and 
Pemberton out of office. See New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xix, 236. 


356 INCREASE MATHER 


ends,’* but consistently set their faces against a plan advocated 
by their agent in London, Sir Henry Ashurst,5° by the Corpora- 
tion, by the clergy, and by Bellomont himself. They would lose 
their case rather than send Mather to England. There is obvious 
here the hand of those who hated the new government and the 
diplomat who accepted it. They could not share his belief that 
there should be close relations between Boston and London and 
deference to English law. Mather’s own hopes came to naught, 
and with them perished the colonists’ dream of a legal estab- 
lishment for Harvard. 

In July, 1700, a new resolve was passed, requiring the Presi- 
dent of Harvard to live at Cambridge and granting him two 
hundred and twenty pounds a year. Mather was elected presi- 
dent, and a committee waited upon him to urge him to accept 
office upon the prescribed terms. By this time the Second Church 
could see obvious dangers to Congregationalism which might 
threaten if Mather left Harvard. They voted to allow him to 
move to Cambridge. In July, 1700, he took up his residence 
across the river, several hours’ journey from his beloved congre- 
gation and the busy life of Boston, endeared to him by the years 
he had shared in it. 

He stood his exile until October 17, and then he wrote to 
Stoughton that he could stay no longer at the college, bidding 
him find another president. This resignation went to the legis- 
lators in February, 1701, and they voted that Samuel Willard 
should be made vice-president and that, if Mather refused to 
return to Cambridge, Willard and the Corporation should take 
over the control of Harvard. The president’s house was re- 
paired, and Mather made one last effort to endure life there. On 
June 30, 1701, he wrote to Stoughton: 


I promised the last General Court to take care of the College until 
the Commencement. Accordingly I have been residing in Cambridge 
these three months. I am determined (if the Lord will) to return to 
Boston the next week, and no more return to reside in Cambridge; for 
it is not reasonable to desire me to be (as, out of respect to the public 
interest, I have been six months within this twelve) any longer absent 

49. “The settlement of Harvard College seems to involve the ardent desires and 
affections of these people beyond all other things in this world; for as they have an 
extraordinary zeal and fondness for their religion, so anything that disturbs ’em in that, 


touches ’em in their tenderest part.” Cal. State Papers, Am. and W.1., xviii, % 641. 
50. Cf. MHS Coll., Series 6, v, 91. 





THE FIRST DEFEAT Saf 


from my family. And it is much more unreasonable to desire one, so 
circumstanced as I am, to remove my family to Cambridge, when the 
College is in such an unsettled state. I do therefore earnestly desire, 
that the General Court would, as soon as may be, think of another 
President for the College. It would be fatal to the interest of religion, 
if a person disaffected to the order of the Gospel, professed and prac- 
tised in these churches, should preside over this society. I know the 


General Assembly, out of their regard to the interest of Christ, will | 
take care to prevent it. It is, and has been, my prayer to God, that | 


one much more learned than I am, and more fit to inspect and govern 


the College, may be sent hither, and one whom all the churches in New | 


England shall have cause to bless the Lord for. 
So I remain yours to honor and serve, 
IncrEASE MaTHER. 
From the College in Cambridge, 
Fune 30th, 1702. 


The General Court received this letter in August, and sum- 
moned Mather to appear before them. He came, and told them 
he would not live at the college, but, if they wished, he would 
retain the presidency on the old basis of non-residence.** They 
must have been thoroughly irritated by his persistent refusal to 
obey the laws they had made, and voted now to ask Willard to 
move to Cambridge and take control of Harvard. 

He, like Mather, could not bring himself to leave Boston. The 
representatives, before his final decision was announced, passed 
once more a resolve urging Mather to continue in office and live 
at the college; but the Council knew how little they could hope 
for from such a plea and pursued their efforts with Willard. He 
at last agreed to undertake to govern Harvard, but only as a 
non-resident. 

The Council now voted that Willard should be made vice- 
president, ‘‘to take the oversight of the College ... and to reside 
there one or two days and nights in a week.” The representatives 
concurred in this. Technically the law was complied with. By 
giving Willard the title of vice-president, this plan made it pos- 

g1. Quincy (History, i, 113) seems to neglect the fact that Mather said he would 
“continue his care of the College as formerly,” that is,ona non-resident basis. Certainly 
Quincy’s reflections on Mather’s “caprice” in that he “would neither reside nor resign” 
are unjust. Mather steadfastly refused to “reside,” and as steadfastly continued to 


“resign”? when he had the chance. If the legislators were as annoyed as Quincy be- 
lieved, all they had to do was accept any one of the resignations Mather offered. 


358 INCREASE MATHER 


sible for him to live in Boston. By giving him the actual authority 
in the college, it virtually ousted Mather. The long campaign 
against the Teacher of the Second Church was finished. He could 
not remain as President of Harvard unless he sacrificed his pride 
or gave up the most valuable part of his work. No idea of liberal- 
ity in religion dictated his removal, for Willard shared with his 
predecessor a belief that orthodoxy must be safeguarded. No 
belief that Mather had been a witch-persecutor caused his fall, 
for all that could be said against him could be said against 
Willard.” The secret of Increase Mather’s defeat lay in the politi- 
cal enmity aroused by his agency, in the general feeling, fostered 
by Cotton Mather’s volubility, that the Mathers sought to con- 
trol all men, in the ex-president’s contempt for the desires of 
the legislature, and in certain personal attacks made upon him. . 
Willard was his logical successor, as the next most prominent 
divine in Boston, and he was also the brother-in-law of Joseph 
Dudley, who was soon to become governor of the colony. 

The assaults made upon Mather’s personal motives and charac- 
ter undoubtedly played a part in defeating him. These connect 
themselves, for the most part, with the attempt made by the two 
Brattles, Leverett, and Ebenezer Pemberton to force certain 
alterations in church discipline upon their more orthodox breth- 
ren. One remembers Mather’s pleas against apostasy, uttered in 
his writings for these years. The basis for his remarks appears in 
the story of the Brattle Street Church.* 
~ The debate centred about the manner of admission to full 

communion in churches. The old practice required a relation of 
religious experience. The Brattle party wished to abolish this. 
They also felt that all baptized persons in the church who helped 
to pay the minister’s salary should have a vote in choosing him 
to office. This was a deviation from the usual custom, by which 
ministers were selected only by those who had been admitted to 

52. Quincy’s comparison of Mather and Willard (History, i, 147, 148) is quite un- 

just. He implies that Willard kept out of the intolerant controversies to which Mather 
is said to have been addicted. Nothing is necessary here except the memory of Wil- 
lard’s Ne Sutor Ultra Crepidam, an attack on the Baptists, which Mather’s views, ex- 
pressed in his preface, do not rival in intolerance or zeal for controversy. Enough has 
been said to show how thoroughly erroneous is Quincy’s comparison of Willard and 
Mather as to their witchcraft views. 

53- For the controversy discussed in the text which follows, I have relied upon the 
accounts given in W. Walker, Creeds and Platforms, pp. 472-477, and A History, pp. - 


199-201; S. K. Lothrop, 4 History of the Church in Brattle Street; and The Manifesto 
Church — Records of the Church in Brattle Square. 





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THE FIRST DEFEAT 359 


full communion. Again, certain divines advocated the use of the | 
Lord’s Prayer and the reading of passages from the Bible without | 
exposition or comment. Such practices savored too much of the 
liturgical to commend themselves to the stricter brethren. Finally, 
the “radicals” advocated admitting to baptism any child pre-! 
sented and sponsored by a professing Christian. 3 
Mather’s church put itself on record in a vigorous protest to 
their brethren in Charlestown, who had chosen a minister by 
vote of all those who contributed to his support. On the other 
hand, Mather was content to preach when William Brattle, a 
champion of the proposed changes, was ordained in Cambridge.* 
Criticism and concessions alike failed to deter the innovators, 
and the Brattles and their followers proceeded to found a fourth 
Congregational Church in Boston. To its pulpit they called 
Benjamin Colman, a Harvard graduate of the class of 1692, who 
was then in England.* He secured ordination at the hands of the 
London Presbytery and came to Boston in November, 1699. 
On the seventeenth of that month there was published “A 
Manifesto or Declaration, Set Forth by the Undertakers of the 
_ New Church.” 8° This declared that, in order to prevent “all 
_ Misapprehensions and Jealousies,” the new church expressed its 
_ “Aims and Designs.” These were comprised in sixteen articles. 
They upheld the new doctrines we have glanced at, but approved 
and subscribed the Westminster “Confession of Faith,” asserting 
» the new church’s intention to worship as God and the Scriptures 
demanded, in accordance with the methods followed by some 
_ Presbyterians and Congregationalists. 
Cotton Mather saw in the “Manifesto” “articles that utterly 
| subvert our churches.” His father and James Allen, repre- 
senting the Second and First Churches, refused to join in a fast 
_with the Fourth or Brattle Street Church, set up by the inno- 
-vators. Higginson and Noyes of Salem also wrote to the new 
_ congregation a letter of reproof. But Willard of the Third Church, 
- Stoughton, Sewall, and Cotton Mather himself,s7 drew up a basis 


> ¢¢ 


| . 54. MHS Coll., Series 5, v, 438. 
55. For him, see E. Turell, Life ana Character of Benjamin Colman, and the works 
- cited in note 53, passim. 
56. The Manifesto Church, p. 5; S. K. Lothrop, History, pp. 20ff. 
57. W. Walker, Creeds and Platforms, p. 477; Lothrop, 4 History, pp. 28ff.; Quincy 
(History, i, 135, 136) takes the view that Cotton Mather played no part in the recon- 
 ciliation. This conclusion, however, seems to have been caused by neglect of the 
records, as is shown by B. Wendell, Cotton Mather, p. 143n., and A. P. Marvin, The 
_ Life and Times of Cotton Mather, pp. 211ff. 


a aS ee 


360 INCREASE MATHER 


of agreement and on January 31, 1700, all the Boston Congre- 
gational organizations joined Colman’s flock in worship. Both 
Mathers preached. 

To unite in one religious service with the “radicals” was not 
to endorse their principles. Increase Mather took good care that 
he was understood to do no more than conform to the need of 
maintaining harmony among Boston churches, for he published a 
thorough exposition of the arguments which he believed could be 
urged against the tenets held by Colman’s friends. This was his 
“Order of the Gospel,” “one of the most interesting, but at the 
‘same time controversial, tracts of Congregational history.” »* 

He has been blamed for writing it. It has been called a masked 
battery against the Brattles, and has been held up as a proof of 
his lust for controversy.*? It is hardly just to stop with such views. 
Mather, believing sincerely in the correctness of the Congrega- 
tional methods which Colman wished to alter, had a choice be- 
tween keeping silence without striking a blow in defence of his 
doctrines, and writing his views. If he chose the latter course, he 
might criticize Colman, Brattle, Pemberton, and the rest, and 
confine his censure to them and their theories, or he might sum 
up in one book the arguments against all the current suggestions 
for altering Congregationalism, without limiting himself to those 
espoused by the Brattle Street Church. This was what he did. 
He mentioned no names, he attacked no man’s motives, but he 
pointed out in detail what he felt to be the most cogent reasons 
against the critics of the old methods. He could hardly have done 
less. As for his raising a masked battery against the Brattles, 
such phrases have no meaning. He raised a frankly hostile bat- 
tery against the Brattles, Stoddard, and other new-school Con- 
gregationalists, but he confined his discussion to their ideas. If, 
to-day, a man writes a book arguing against Christian Science, 
if an Episcopalian bishop argues for the divinity of Christ, if a 
Unitarian challenges certain evangelical doctrines, or if a non- 
conformist criticizes the English liturgy, he does no more than 
write of his convictions on matters he believes to be important. 
But, forsooth, if he attacks opinions, not men, and does not 

58. W. Walker, Creeds and Platforms, pp. 477, 478. “The Order of the Gospel, Pro- 
fessed and Practised by the Churches of Christ in New-England, Justified, by the Scrip- 
ture, and by the Writings of many Learned men, both Ancient and Modern Divines 
In Answer to several Questions, relating to Church Discipline.” Boston, 1700. 


59. Quincy, History, i, 138ff. 
60. Cf. Walker, Creeds and Platforms, p. 281. 


THE FIRST DEFEAT 361 


mention any of those who fail to share his views, he raises a 
masked battery. He is an intemperate controversialist, as. 
surely as Mather was. The only way to escape the reproaches 
bestowed upon the author of the “Order of the Gospel”’ is never 
to put pen to paper in defence of any opinion with which any ~“ 
human being disagrees. Such a programme would result in 
harmony and also in complete intellectual stagnation. 

Mather attacked no individual and was moderate in his criti- 
cism of doctrines. Such was, as we have seen, his usual method 
in religious debates. As early as 1662 he proved that he could 
write on problems about which he felt deeply, without overstep- 
ping the bounds of courtesy toward his opponents. When he 
turned to defend the Half-Way Covenant, he was careful in his 
references to those who disliked it. It was only in his political 
tracts, where Andros and Randolph were his targets, that he 
indulged in heated personalities. 

His “Order of the Gospel”’ he dedicates to the churches of New 
England. He summarizes certain doctrines, corresponding in 
part to those of the “Manifesto,” and declares that, if they 
are accepted, “we then give away she whole Congregational cause 
at once, and a great part of the Presbyterian Discipline also.” * 
It is presumptuous for an individual church to inaugurate one of 
these new principles except with the consent of a synod, and “to 
design all or most of these Junovations at once, is certainly a bold 
Attempt.” “Shall we then by Silence betray the Truth?” he 
asks. He declares that the cause he defends is Christ’s cause, and 
says: “I am...very sensible that young Divines, who have not 
Studied these Controversies, are apt to think, that what has been 
Ordinarily professed and practised in the Churches of New England, 
is Novelty and Singularity. It may in that respect be a Service to 
the Churches that something be written, which may be for the 
Information and Illumination of such, in Questions of this nature, 
by means whereof they may be the more fit to Serve the Churches 
of God wherever the Divine Providence shall see fit to dispose of 
them.” Some of the third generation in New England lack the 
“Principles, Spirit, and Grace of their Fathers and Grand- 
fathers.” The college needs prayers, and faithful tutors who will 
“not Hanker after new and loose wayes.” This one phrase 
savors of a direct personal reflection, inasmuch as Pemberton, 
Leverett, and Brattle had all been tutors at Harvard. Even so, 


61. Epistle Dedicatory. Cf. Walker, Creeds and Platforms, p. 475. 


=~ . 


362 INCREASE MATHER 


it is hard to see how Mather could have spoken of the need for 
orthodox teaching at the college without attacking in some 
measure his erstwhile subordinates. The climax of his preface 
comes in as true a sentence as he ever wrote. “The Congregational 


Church Discipline, is not suited for a Worldly Interest, or for a 


Formal Generation of Professors. It will stand... as Godliness in 
the Power of it does prevail.” 

Nothing in this preface smacks unduly of personal malice 
against anyone, and only one or two phrases can be twisted into 
criticism of any individual or group. The same tone is kept in the 
body of the book, which considers seventeen questions relating to 
certain changes in church practice. 

To summarize the most important of his answers, which he 
drew from the Bible, as he interpreted it, and from learned 
writers, he declares that individual churches consist of “Saints 
and true Believers on Christ.”’ Candidates for communion should 
ordinarily be examined, but “a rigid Severity in Examination is 
to be avoided... Yea, it were better, . . . to admit diverse Hypo- 
crites than to keep out one Sincere Child of God from coming into 
the Church.” Then, in one of the few bits of intemperate phrasing 
in the volume, he brands those who do not share his opinion as 
believers in “pernicious error.” He admits that there is a dif. 
ference between Congregational and Presbyterian procedure in 
deciding the fitness of applicants for communion, and inclines 
toward the Congregational theory, though he sees nothing in this 
question to cause any ““breach of Amity or Union” between the 
two sects. He denies that it is necessary for persons admitted to 
a church to make a public relation of their conversion, but he 
asserts the right of any congregation to demand such an account 
of religious experience, orally or in writing, in any individual case. 
Here he agrees essentially with the “Manifesto,” although he 
does insist upon the church’s right to demand “public relations” 
when they seem necessary. He admits the lawfulness of reading 
Scripture without exposition or comment, but he maintains that 
a minister who continues to explain what he reads is deficient 
in no part of his duty. 

On the subject of baptism, the largest issue in debate, he once 
more goes beyond moderate speech, stating that the view ex- 
pressed in the “Manifesto” (although he does not mention where 
it appeared) “is Popish and Anti-christian.” He does not believe 


62. Epistle Dedicatory. 





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THE FIRST DEFEAT 363 


that ministers should be chosen by all of those who are to pay 
for their support. Most of his arguments here seem very weak, 
but the essential point he makes is that the divine’s main duty is 
toward communicants, that he is responsible to them as the active 
members of the congregation, and that, therefore, to them belongs 
the right to elect their pastor. He advocates close relations be- 
tween churches, so that new congregations may not be organized, 
or new ministers ordained, without ““Common Consent.” Not 
only the divines but the brethren of each church may vote in 
ecclesiastical councils. The “Essence of a Ministers Call consists 
in a mutual Election between him and his People,” and no 
pastor should be ordained except as an officer of a particular 
church and, preferably, in the presence of his congregation. “To 
say that a Wandring Levite who has no Flock is a Pastor, is as 
good Sense as to say, that he that has no Children is a Father, and 
that the man who has no Wife is a Husband.” Here was a barbed 
shaft, probably intended as such, cast toward Benjamin Colman, 
whose ordination had been highly irregular according to Mather’s 
standards. Finally, referring to his own work in 1691, he says 
that Presbyterian and Congregational churches can and should 
“maintain Communion with one another.” ® | 

Such was the essence of Increase Mather’s plea for the old Con- 
gregational standards as opposed to Stoddard, Colman, and the 
others who believed that to them had been vouchsafed an ability 
to interpret the Scriptures in a way unknown to earlier Puritans. 
He wrote the “Order of the Gospel” as an argument upon the 
questions under discussion, and the few passages we have quoted 
contain the only bits of abusiveness that he included in his book. 
He defended not only his own views, but those of most of his 
brethren; and it is worth remembering that he was not a voice 
crying in a wilderness: of the three original churches in Boston 
two, and part of the third, opposed the Brattles’ doctrine. Noyes, 
Higginson, and the legislators of the state proved that they, too, 
had no illusions as to the coming of new prophets to Boston in 
the shape of Benjamin Colman and his friends. 

Ore Aves 837 10; 22020 Ole 92 ..91,,102,/T 30. 

64. C. Mather, in Thirty Important Cases, tells of a general meeting of ministers 
from various parts of Massachusetts, on May 27, 1697. The following vote was passed: 
“We Ministers of the Gospel, in the Churches of New-England, being made Sensible 
of the Tendencies, which there are among us, towards Deviations from the Good Order, 
wherein our Churches have according to the Word of the Lord Jesus Christ, been 


happily Established and Continued: 
Do here Declare and Subscribe, our full Purpose, by the Help of our Great Lord, to 


364 INCREASE MATHER 


There was room, of course, for the Brattle Street Church to 
defend its position, and not all of Mather’s arguments were un- 
answerable. The reply to him came in “Gospel Order Revived,” 
published in 1700. This deserves reading. There is a humorous 
tone in many of its pages, a satirical spirit, and an occasional 
passage of lampooning wit, which make it seem like a cool breeze 
in a desert of too arid Puritan theological writing. Had its graces 
and skill been turned to account solely in the interests of honest 
opinion on religious problems, it would be hard to resist. As it is, 
many paragraphs are more than adequate as an answer to Mather. 
Others fall short, and many fail to observe what he actually wrote. 
But on almost every page there are spatterings of personal ani- 
mosity, hints of malice against Mather, and a tendency to dis- 
cuss, not issues, but the motives of the President of Harvard, 
which still prejudice the effect of the reasoning. Mather is said to 
have “obtruded” his own doctrines upon the churches. There are 
hints as to his “secret aim.”’ “We hope,” the authors write, “he 
has no private Interest to bribe him in this Affair; and we hope 
for a like favourable and candid Construction of this Reply.” 
Mather’s book is a “faulty treatise.” There is a jibe at his early 
disapproval of the Half-Way Synod’s decision, and a hint that 
he joined Chauncy in writing the “Anti-Synodalia.” This Cotton 
Mather denied, and for it no proof exists. “Its known there was 
Anti-Synodalia printed, and who had a hand in it, and how modest 
his Dissent was, and in what terms they contradicted what the 
Synod had established, tho’ the like is criminal and insufferable 
in any other.” © 

The tone of this is typical of too much of the book, and its 
assertions are quite unfounded. It was hardly fair to reproach a 


mentain [sic] in our several Places, the Purity, and Fellowship, and Liberties of our 
Churches, upon all those Principles, which we apprehend Essential to the Congregational 
Church-Discipline, hitherto Professed in these Churches. And, that we will in matters 
of Moment calling for it, mutually Advise, and Assist, and Hearken to, each other in 
the Lord.” 

This was signed by Increase Mather, William Hubbard, Charles Morton, James 
Allen, Samuel Torrey, Samuel Willard, Samuel Cheever, Moses Fiske, Joseph Esta- 
brook, Jabez Fox, Jeremiah Shepard, Thomas Clark, Peter Thacher, and, Cotton 
Mather says, “many others.” 

The “Order of the Gospel” was in direct defence of the principles expressed in this 
vote. 

65. “Gospel Order Revived, Being an Answer to a Book lately set forth by the 
Reverend Mr. Increase Mather.... By sundry Ministers of the Gospel in New-England. 
Printed in the Year 1700,” 

66. Preface. 


THE FIRST DEFEAT 365 


man with defiance of a Synod after he had altered his views, and 
had publicly owned his conversion in two printed books. More- 
over, even when Mather did oppose the Synod, his “Apologetical 
Preface” was nothing if not moderate in its expression. Assum- 
ing that his recital of erroneous doctrines in his preface to the 
“Order of the Gospel” was meant to summarize the “Manifesto,” 
which it never professed to do, his critics attack him for garbling 
the Brattle Street Church’s declaration. Other charges as to 
his misuse of quotations may be more just, but seem based only 
on the inevitable disagreement in interpretation which arises 
when any two men of different views attempt to apply a given 
writing to their own uses. Mather is accused of an effort to 
terrify his readers, he is blamed for his lack of brevity, and, with 
a sneer hardly suited to anything purporting to be a serious docu- 
ment in an important controversy, the authors remark, “he may 
mean well.” One of his arguments is called “‘a pitious stumble” 
and “so miserable an inconsequence”’ (p. 15). That politics 
was not quite forgotten appears in the comment that, as 
the new charter and laws were made by men, they may be 
undone by men; and there is a vague hint as to Mather’s de- 
ficiencies in serving the colony in London. And, finally, we read: 
“Should the Author grow angry, it would but cause us to suspect 
(what a bundance of people have long obstinately believed) that, 
the contest for his part is more for Lordship and Dominion than 
for Truth” (p. 36). 

To suggest that Mather relied upon a sort of tyrannical 
influence exerted upon New England, there was included in the 
“Gospel Order Revived” a statement that the book could not be 
printed in Boston, because the printers there were so in awe of the 
reverend doctor as to dare to take nothing which reflected upon 
him. To this the Boston publisher to whom the Brattles had 
offered the manuscript promptly replied, denying the charge. 
With this answer Cotton Mather published a heated denunciation 
of the authors of the “Gospel Order Revived.” They, in turn, 
replied once more, answering personal attack by personal attack, 
and reasserting their accusation that Mather’s influence had made 
it impossible for their book to be printed in Boston.® 

The affidavits offered on both sides are preserved. On some 
minor points they disagree, but one or two bits of fact seem un- 


67. Preface, p. 2. 
68. I. Thomas, History of Printing, i, 415f. 


366 INCREASE MATHER 


shaken. These are, first, that Thomas Brattle and three other 
men connected with the new church were responsible for print- 
ing the “Gospel Order Revived,” that they refused to divulge its 
authors’ names, and that the printer dared not assume the respon- 
sibility of printing an anonymous attack on a prominent citizen 
without the sanction of someone in authority. He suggested that 
Stoughton’s approval be sought; but to this the authors’ repre- 
sentatives would not consent, though the lieutenant governor 
had been tolerant toward the Brattle Street Church. They 
refused to submit the book to him because, they said, this would 
be to inaugurate a new custom, and there was no reason why they 
should be discriminated against. This specious plea the printer 
exploded, by reminding them that Samuel Sewall had been quite 
content to have a book of his judged by Stoughton. For their 
main contention the Brattles could produce no proof. They were 
not able to show that Mather directly or indirectly prevented the 
publication of their book in Boston. Moreover, they revealed 
themselves as daring to attack only from the ambush of ano- 
nymity and afraid to submit their manuscript to criticism by 
an open-minded arbitrator. There was nothing glorious in their 
course, and their remarks as to Mather’s influence on the press, 
however useful to their ends, were sadly deficient in truth. 

Had Colman and his friends chosen to debate with attention 
to the problems involved and with the same lack of personality 
and bad temper shown by Mather, they might easily have won a 
hearing and, perhaps, support from fair-minded readers of to-day. 


But they chose a course which inevitably casts suspicion on their _ 


motives. Presumably their interest was in matters of church 
polity. They chose to defend their views by personal attacks on 
the man who had written his criticism of their opinions. They 
chose to ascribe evil motives to him, to make malicious innuen- 
does, and, not content with this, they sought refuge in anonymity, 
a protection commonly used in such cases only by cowards or 
those whose arguments are weak. Had Mather not signed his 
book, they might have been excused for answering it anony- 
mously. He had not added his name to the political pamphlets 
he wrote in reply to anonymous critics of New England, but the 
Brattle party had not his excuse. Their views were seriously 
discussed by a minister who was not ashamed to sign what he 
wrote and they retaliated by seeking to smirch his character while 
they dodged responsibility for what they said. It is hard, in the 





THE FIRST DEFEAT 367 


face of this, to forget what grounds the two Brattles and Leverett 
had for personal bias. It is hard to shut out the thought that, as 
Mather had combatted their remaining in office at Harvard, they 


may have had spite as well as zeal for truth when they cast stones | 


at him. Such suspicions may be unjust, but the fact remains 


that it was they who dragged the controversy down from the , 


plane of serious theological discussion to the level of spiteful 
abuse by men who dared not own what they wrote. 

Nor is it possible certainly to whitewash the Brattle party by 
saying that they fought, however ill chosen their weapons, for 
“liberality”? as opposed to reactionary intolerance. When one 
considers the tenets of this or that creed, it is hard to draw 
a sharp line between progress and reaction. Is an Anglican 
illiberal because he believes in a liturgy? Is a Unitarian illiberal 
because he does not acknowledge the divinity of Christ? Was 
Mather illiberal because he believed that the Congregational 
Church in New England had adopted methods which accorded 
with truth? If those who propose change are always progressive, 
then the Brattles were progressives; but so was Jonathan Edwards 
when, years after Mather’s time, he turned to a discipline stricter 
than that the conservatives urged in 1700, and so was Mather 
when he opposed John Wise, who was combatting changes in the 
conventional polity and wished to maintain the old standard. 
How we judge Mather, Wise, or Edwards depends on our own 
individual views as to what is right in regard to forms of worship. 
All three of these men defended the existing order against those 
who wished to change it, but their opponents urged only what 
had been before employed in ecclesiastical organizations and so 
were, if one wishes to think of them as such, reactionary. The 
Brattles, too, fought for practices which were not new, but had 
been tried in other churches before their time. Were they pro- 
gressives or reactionaries? To Mather that was not the question. 
They seemed to him to be men who wished to introduce into the 
Congregational church a discipline not in accord with its best 
interests. That his fears were not unfounded is shown by the 
fact that their views, once adopted and logically developed, are 
said to have led to the formation of a new sect not Congregational 
at all.°? Nor can we find any sure basis by which to judge of their 
liberalism. If an innovation in polity could be shown to work 
undeniably in the interest of better life and sincerer worship for 


69. Cf. E. Pond, Lives of Increase Mather and Sir William Phipps, p. 124. 


a 


368 INCREASE MATHER 


bd 


most men, we should call it “progress”; but there is nothing in 
the Brattle Street Church’s programme which can unhesitatingly 
be thus classified. If it was on the side of “progress” because it 
made available for more people the chief sacrament of the church 
and thus was “democratic,” then, by the same reasoning, Mather 
was more liberal than his opponents when he declared that church 
members, not ministers alone, had a right to vote in church coun- 
cils and that the brethren as well as the elders should pass on the 
qualifications of candidates for membership. Neither the read- 
ing of the Scriptures without comment, nor using the words of the 
Lord’s Prayer, were practices essential to human progress, and 
Mather maintained that, although neither was unlawful, neither 
was necessary for salvation. 

It is safest to leave “liberality” and “reaction” aside when one 
discusses the religious movements of 1700. Neither term fits 
either party in the debate. Nor should we forget that the Brattle 
Street Church soon took its place in the orderly day-to-day 
Congregationalism of Boston, where its individual tenets were not 
generally influential, and that its minister, if he is to be hailed 
as a “liberal,” must be so named only in 1700, for he promptly 
distinguished himself by his conservatism and joined a move- 
ment designed to prevent just such innovations as that which 
he had fostered.” 

But, if we still like to think of the Brattles as “liberals,” 
fighting a bigoted majority, we may regret the more that their 
enlightenment could find no weapon better than personal abuse, 
and that their method had to be so nearly that of the irate fish- 
wife. If the “Order of the Gospel” was the voice of blind reac- 
| tion, it is deplorable that it could be answered only by malicious 
_hints, sneers, and political innuendoes, all discharged by hidden 
adversaries. For thirty-eight years Mather had been writing in 
Boston, and his expressed views had often run counter to those 
of other men, who had answered him. Except in political 
squabbles, where no higher standards than those of the man in 
the street were demanded or of use, he never attacked an oppo- 
nent’s motives or had his own called into question in such terms 
as the self-styled advocates of new religious purity and freedom 
chose in 1700. If we must see bigotry in the old Congregation- 
alism, it is unfortunate that we have to remember that Richard 


Mather, John Davenport, Charles Chauncy, Richard Baxter, 
70. W. Walker, 4 History, p. 201; Creeds and Platforms, p. 483. 





THE FIRST DEFEAT 369 


and Increase Mather, all old-school Puritans, managed many 
quarrels over doctrine with no spiteful denunciation of the 
characters of their foes, while the Brattles, Pemberton, Leverett, 
and Colman preferred to deal in malicious hints and veiled 
slights, directed against the motives of their antagonists, and did 
not even banish certain half-truths which came dangerously near 
plain falsehood. It is more comfortable to believe that such 
methods were not those selected by “liberals,” but that the 
whole debate was but one of those common in politics, civil and 
ecclesiastic, of all times. Such controverises seem fundamental 
when they are under discussion, but usually have little bearing 
on the ultimate progress of mankind. Mather saw the issue in 
1700 as one which affected the purity of his church. Larger 
interests were not involved on either side and, whatever we think 
of the merits of the argument, we cannot fail to see that the 
Brattles were those whose cause suffered by the methods they 
condescended to use. 

A greater man than Mather might have received their on- 
slaughts in silence; but his temper was too short, and he felt that 
his cause was too good to be allowed to go by default. He threw 
off his clerical habit, and seized the first cudgel that came to hand. 
He had tried to discuss serious matters in a dignified fashion. 
His answer had been abuse. Now he gave rein to his tongue and 
said what he would have considered unfit for scholarly debate, 
had not his foes shown him that in this dispute no rules of cour- 
tesy were to be observed. 

He wrote the preface to “A Collection of Some of the Many 
Offensive Matters Contained in... The Order of the Gospel 
Revived.” ™ Therein he poured out his resentment in terms quite 
worthy of a friend of the Brattles. He remarks that “as yet no 
minister will own” the “Gospel Order Revived,” but he quite 
directly charges Colman with its authorship. “One that is of 
the same Spirit with him, viz. J. B. has ventured to own himself 
to be the Publisher of that which is an heap of Rude, Unmannerly 
and Unmanly Reflections: who likewise in Print Scornfully styles 
HIS Praesident, a Reverend Scribler, and complains of his Cantings 
...A Moral Heathen would not have done as he has done.” ” So 

71. “A Collection Of Some Of the Many Offensive Matters, Contained in a Pam- 
phlet, Entituled, The Order of the Gospel Revived.” Boston, 1701. The book itself was 
by Cotton Mather (VHS Coll., Series 7, vii, 378). He answered the anonymous 
attack by an anonymous reply, but Increase Mather signed the preface. 


72. Preface. For the expressions used by Brattle in his public answer to the printer’s 
statement, see I. Thomas, History, 1, 418, 419. 


370 INCREASE MATHER 


much for Brattle, in whose case there was reason to suspect 
motives not solely religious. As for the supposed author: “I have 
thought it not worth the while for me to take notice of the im- 
potent 4//atrations of so little a thing as that Youth is.” 7 

The whole controversy is summed up as follows (page 5): 

“The Book of The Order of the Gospel, was written at the desire 

of many principal Persons, in our Churches, and as it is inoffen- 
sively written, advancing Principles, and Arguments, without 
a Manifesto once mentioned, So it maintained nothing but what 
is according to the Ancient Platform, and Practise, and most 
Venerable Sods of our Churches. But some Younger men (as we 
suppose, I’o prove, it seems, That there is no Zpostasy from the 
Order of the Gospel, among them!) have published a Volume of 
_ Invectives against that Book and the Author of it.” 
_ The body of the book was written by Cotton Mather, who 
followed the example set by “Gospel Order Revived,” and did not 
sign it; but Increase Mather frankly endorsed the whole by writ- 
ing the preface over his name. The method of answering the 
Brattles’ work is to quote passages from it, with brief and acid 
comments as to the irreverence, impiety, apostasy, or what not, of 
its authors. It was a clever procedure, provided most of the 
readers of the reply were in sympathy with it; and that Cotton 
Mather wrote in the way he did showed that the majority of 
church members agreed with the original “inoffensive”’ opinions 
and not with the “invective” brought against them. 

Colman was a strong man in many respects. He wrote well 
and had the courage to be a radical and then to become a con- 
servative. In the interest of his reputation, an attempt has been 
made to protect him from the doubtful honor of having written 
“Gospel Order Revived.” % But no charity can save Thomas 
Brattle, who took steps to publish the book, and refused to make 
its author known. His enlightenment as to witchcraft cannot 
relieve him from the reproach of having helped to change a 
religious controversy into a personal quarrel. He could have 
shown his “liberality” quite as well by the sort of argument used 
by Mather and his adversaries for nearly forty years, or by John 
Wise in his equally vigorous and incomparably more fair criti- 
cism of those who differed from him as to ecclesiastical govern- 
ment. It is unfortunate to be obliged to remember that Brattle 


73. Preface. 
74. Cf. A. P. Marvin, Life and Times, p. 219. 





THE FIRST DEFEAT 371 


had a political axe to grind and that “Gospel Order Revived” 
dealt in the sort of denunciation which is perennially useful in 
politics. 

It is even more prejudicial to our good opinion of him and his 
friends, that his name and that of his brother have come to be 
linked, traditionally at least, with Calef’s “More Wonders of the 
Invisible World.” 7* This was, as we have seen, a criticism of 
what had been done in the witchcraft trials, saying only what 
had been said before, not denying the reality of witches, pro- 
posing no way by which the clergy could have prevented the 
tragedy of Salem Village, but distorting the advice they did give 
and using the witch prosecution, Phipps’s career, and the agency 
to England as convenient grounds upon which to assail the 
Mathers. If Brattle had anything to do with this book, it is 
peculiarly discreditable to him. To have written in 1692 a private 
letter praising Increase Mather’s attitude as to the witch court, 
and then to countenance a book which hinted that he was not as 
enlightened as Brattle had admitted him to be, would be the acts 
of a man for whom truth mattered little when weighed against a 
desire for revenge upon political foes. Brattle had nothing to gain 
from Calef’s “enlightenment.”” The latter’s book, with all its 
merits, followed, not heralded a change in popular opinion. But 
politically it was well timed, for 1700 was the year when the 
attacks on Mather were most vigorous. It is noticeable, too, that 
Calef often deserts his ostensible purpose of discussing witchcraft, 
in order to introduce material useful for a political onslaught on 
Mather.” 

This book, too, was promptly answered, this time by certain 
members of the Second Church.77 They printed Mather’s own 
defence of his agency, which more than meets the vague charges 
brought against him. 

Thus we see that, in 1701, when he lost the presidency of Harvard 
and indignantly recorded in his diary his sense of the injustice 
done him, Increase Mather fell before odds too great for him. 


Frank and honest political opposition from Cooke, playing upon ~ a 


the people’s dread of “royal tyranny,” had turned them against 
the agent who had compromised with England. Thus had de- 


75. Cf. S. G. Drake, The Witchcraft Delusion, ii, p. xxix. 

76. Tradition asserts that Mather had Calef’s book burned at Harvard. This state- 
ment is made repeatedly, as fact, but I have not been able to find any basis for it in the 
College papers, Sewall’s diary, or any other contemporary record. 


Pat. p. 3i2, note 72, ante. 


Rye INCREASE MATHER 


veloped, in the form of insistence upon a resident leader for 
Harvard, a movement which made Mather’s position at the col- 
lege untenable. Couple with this the fact that he had long been a 
leader, that his son tried to continue his power with no sparing of 
his vocabulary in the attempt to impose his views upon others, 
and remember that some citizens came very naturally, in accord- 
ance with the inevitable tendencies of human nature, to long for 
the day when someone other than the two Mathers might control 
the church.7® Join with such men others who had new theories 
about church discipline, and one sees how many groups, and how 
many differing opinions, Mather must have conciliated if he were 
to remain unchallenged. There were no large questions of general 
importance involved in the contest against him. The election 
of a new head for the college represented no change in policy, 
and was merely change, not progress. 

Much has been said of Increase Mather’s ambition.79 Am- 
bitious he surely was, if it be ambitious to hold strong beliefs and 
an invincible desire to see them influential among men. But as 
to ambition for high office or personal power, one cannot be so 
sure. He was intensely desirous to go once more to England as 
colonial agent. No doubt he remembered the honor he had 
received in London and longed for more; but it is no less than 
just to remember that he seems to have meant what he said when 
he declared that he was eager to go abroad in order to serve the 
colony. In this hope he was defeated, and New England never 
gained what he had planned to seek, until a royal governor, less 
scrupulous than his predecessors, cut the Gordian knot by incor- 
porating the college by a method they had not considered legal.8° 
As for ambition at Harvard, it is perfectly clear that Mather 
valued his office there less than many other things. He defied 
repeatedly the wishes of those in whose power his appointment 
lay, and as often he refused to compromise in order to keep his 
place. Nor was ambition the root of his refusal to leave Boston. 
His position there was in no danger. His daily attendance at 
his church was not necessary for his leadership. When, years 
later, he tried to resign, his congregation would not allow him 
to do so. He had no interests at stake, so far as greed for office 


78. For hints of the existence of such a class, see MHS Coll., Series 7, vii, 317, 318, 
323, 338, 3775 380, ete. 

79. Cf., for example, J. A. Doyle, The Puritan Colonies, ii, 331. 

80. [bid., 467. 





THE FIRST DEFEAT AS 


was concerned, except at Harvard, and there he revealed the 
utmost indifference toward strengthening his defences. If he 
was ambitious, it was because he longed to serve Harvard in 
England and to continue what he saw as the policy of keeping 
friendly relations between colony and mother country; because 
he was eager to have his sermons turn many to righteousness; 
because he doted on the activity he found in Boston; and because 
he was devoted to Congregationalism and the carrying out of 
God’s will by doing practical work in the largest community 
which offered him a hearing. Thus far he was ambitious, thus far 
he was proud, and thus far he was selfish. Such ambition, pride, 
and self-seeking are less ignoble than the same vices less directly 
connected with a practical ideal that the greatest power is 
synonymous with the greatest opportunity to be useful. 

So in 1701 Mather turned back to his church and his study, 
keenly alive to the sharpness of popular ingratitude, sorely dis- 
tressed by the heretical tendencies of the time, and mourning for 
the better days he remembered as he looked back over his sixty 
years of life. He had little with which to reproach himself. He 
had been both wise and bold in the decisions he made for the 
colony during his agency; he had been unflinching in his deter- 
mination to yield nothing essential to his faith; and he had never 
been willing to compromise when it seemed to him that truth was 
at stake. Politically he had made enemies: he had frankly com- 
batted those ministers who departed from his standards, and he 
had refused to truckle to any party in order to save his personal 
prestige. He had been attacked by those who sought change, by 
those who considered themselves prophets of religious advance, 
by those who hated the new charter, and, alas, by those who had 
personal grudges to repay. They had secured a partial victory. 
Willard was a man who held no ideas differing essentially from 
Mather’s. No great cause was served by his becoming the presi- 
dent of the college. All that was accomplished was that a man 
who had done more than any other New Englander of his time 
in the interests of his people, his college, and his church, was 
deposed from an office which he would not struggle to keep.* 

81. In his Autosiography he wrote: “The college was, through the malice of Drs. 
Cooper & Byfield, put in to the hands of Mr. Willard... which showed great partiality 
in the Court. Thus have I been requited by them for all the service I have endeavored 
to do for them, & for the College. But why should I think much of it, when Moses, yea, 


the Lord himself was ill-rewarded by those whom he had laid under infinite obligations 
of gratitude. ... Doubtless there is not any government in the world that has been 


374 INCREASE MATHER 


Surrender was not yet. Increase Mather never dreamed of 
turning from the plough. In the twenty-two years which 
remained to him, he wrote more than in all his previous life. 
President of Harvard or private citizen, beloved agent or rejected 
public servant, admired man of affairs or mere parish minister, 
his energy was devoted unflaggingly to the carrying on of his 
life’s object. No worldly concern mattered if he could bring one 
human being to share with him his mystical devotion to God and 
Christ, his intense and passionate vision of them as the most real 
‘elements of life, and his absorption in their service as the one 
enthralling opportunity for self-development. The Town-house 
‘might be full of his enemies, his seat at Harvard might be filled 
by another, and scurrilous pamphlets might attack him, but in 
his ardent devotion, deep faith, and continual zeal for service, 
was a realm beyond the reach of human foes. 

Whatever his personal defeat, the political system he believed 
‘in continued. Cooke was ousted from office. The radicals in 
the Congregational fold soon adapted themselves to the existing 
order. All that he had worked for persisted. There remained 
still the great task of turning men and women toward godliness. 
Upon him and his brethren devolved the labor of keeping alive 
the old faith, and he never lived to see it disappear. That it was 
as widespread as it was, was largely due to him; that it should 
continue a force among men, was the object to which he dedi- 
cated his remaining years. 
laid under greater obligations by a greater man than this government has been by me. 
Nevertheless I have received more discouragement in the work of the Lord, by those in 
government, than by all the men in the world besides. Let not my children put too 


much confidence in men. It may be such as you have laid under the greatest obliga- 
tions of gratitude, will prove most unkind to them. I have often had experience of it.” 





CHAPTER XxX 


OLD AGE AND THE NEW CENTURY 
ieee MATHER’S childhood fell in the days of Milton, 


and now, in his age, he was to be a pilgrim in the world of 
Addison, Swift, and Pope. Samuel Johnson was fourteen years 
old in 1723, and, in Boston, Benjamin Franklin had left boyhood 
behind before the old minister of the Second Church, whom he 
remembered throughout his life,’ gave up his work. Queen Anne 
came to the throne in England in 1702, and George [ in 1714. 
Mather died in 1723. He lived through nearly one quarter of the 
new century which followed that in which he had been the leader 
of Massachusetts. 

His last twenty-three years contain no less incident, no less 
activity, and more literary production than any others of his life. 
Their significance is, however, much less. He touched no new 
literary note after 1701, and in only one respect did he step in 
advance of his generation and become what we should call an 
“eighteenth-century thinker.” In his old age there were de- 
veloped further traits already apparent in him; then were written 
more books of theology, scholarly by the standard of his time; 
but there are no hints of anything distinctly new in his character 
or thought. The period from 1701 to 1723 may, therefore, be 
left comparatively unnoticed, provided one remembers that it 
contained Mather’s vigorous expression of his faith and his carry- 
ing out of what he saw as his task among men. 


He was not the man to slip back into reveries upon the dear 


dead days. There were institutions which still claimed his 
labors, and, alas, quarrels which his hot temper prolonged. He 
had aspirations toward his old influence in politics. He found 
new interests to which he could devote a zeal unweakened by age. 
And, finally, there was an opportunity to brave popular oppost- 
tion once more, this time in order to further a scientific move- 
ment of such importance in the world’s history that its beginning 
remains one of the brightest pages in the story of eighteenth- 
century thought. 


1. Letter of B. Franklin to Samuel Mather, May 12, 1784. 


376 INCREASE MATHER 


Mather drew sadness from his defeat at Harvard. He made a 
last effort to share in guiding the political destinies of Massa- 
chusetts. In this he may have been actuated in part by a desire. 
to regain his command of the college, either directly or through 
his son; and the story of the attempt forms the least attractive 
side of his activity from 1701 to 1710. It was the final struggle 
of an old man to recapture what had been wrested from him by 
the inevitable changes of human interests and ambitions. It was 
a contest in which he was foredoomed to defeat, and thence came 
more bitterness, a greater sense of man’s ingratitude, and a 
greater longing for the day when he might be released from this 
world, to enter one not ruled by human passions. Yet the great 
aims of his life, the preservation of active faith among men and 
the safeguarding of Congregationalism, were not lost. He never 
saw the complete disruption of the religious system which was 
the centre of his activity. He did not live to see New England 
desert the political foundation he had helped to establish. He 
led his generation, survived it, and died before its ideals were 
superseded. | 

After 1701, however, it is Cotton Mather, not Increase, who is 
to the fore. The son fought the father’s battles. The latter, per- 
force, withdrew more and more to his study. This appears even 
as early as the time of the quarrel with Sewall, which followed 
Increase Mather’s departure from Harvard. Cotton, hearing 
rumors which led him to feel that Sewall’s speech in the Council 
had been hostile to the erstwhile president, took pains to an- 
nounce that the sturdy old merchant had treated Increase Mather 
worse than a negro. Sewall, grieved and, perhaps, a trifle con- 
science-stricken, resorted to a gift of “a Hanch of very good 
Venison” as a peace offering. Neither this, nor earnest con- 
versation at “Mr. Wilkins’,’’ sufficed to end this dispute, and 
even Increase himself declared that some misfortune would surely 
overtake Judge Sewall or his family.2. But the breach was healed 
when the Mathers had a chance to read exactly what had been 
said in the Council; and soon thereafter we find Sewall, in time of 
stress, calling for his old friend Dr. Mather as of yore. Their 
relations survived the shocks of 1701, fomented as they were by 
Cotton Mather’s too great haste in believing the worst. 

It was toward Joseph Dudley, once Puritan and pillar of the 
state under the old charter, now Anglican and servant of England 


2. MHS Coll., Series 5, vi, 43-45. 








OLD AGE AND THE NEW CENTURY Le ig) 


rather than of Massachusetts, and always the adroit politician, 
that the Mathers found most opportunity to display their parti- 
sanship. Dudley came to Boston, as governor, in 1702. He was 
greeted by Sewall and other good citizens, many of whom were 
his political enemies, who took care to pay the proper tributes 
to his good qualities.s With them joined Increase Mather, preach- 
ing a sermon in which he exalted Dudley’s virtues and exhorted 
him to serve his country well.‘ 

Two views of such a discourse are possible. It may be that its 
author, still eager to do what he might to safeguard Harvard 
and the state, or desirous of power for its own sake, truckled to 
Dudley without sincerely approving of him. Or it may be that 
Mather, as his son declared, believed that a New Englander was 
better than an Englishman for a governor in Massachusetts. He 
may have been willing to forgive Dudley’s past shortcomings, 
believing sincerely that there had been true repentance. We 
know that he welcomed the new executive and may have favored 
his appointment. This does not give us a sure basis on which to 
judge motives. 

Dudley had not changed his coat, and some of the tendencies 
which led to his imprisonment by his fellow citizens in 1689 were 
still dominant in him. The Mathers discovered this at once, and 
labored to repair the harm that one of them, at least, had done in 
recommending Dudley’s promotion to the governorship. It has 
been said that Cotton Mather secretly opposed Dudley, while 
publicly he flattered him.’ The same charge is not easily proved 
in the case of Increase. He had little to do with the governor . 
after he took office, and the only evidence that there was a “‘sel- 
fish inconsistency” in the old divine’s acts is that, on many points, 
he shared his son’s views. All we can be sure of is that, after he 
had accepted Dudley, Increase Mather awoke to the faults still 
uncured in the new governor and opposed him by such means as 
he could, refraining meanwhile from any public announcement 
of his attitude. Perhaps this was base and hypocritical. Perhaps 
it was but prudence and the duty of a good citizen not to hasten 
too quickly to denounce a legally appointed representative of the 
crown. Perhaps Mather’s course was dictated by a selfish hope 


3. MHS Coll., Series 5, vi, 57, 58. 

4. In his The Excellency of a Publick Spirit, Boston, 1702. Cf. Quincy, History, 
id go 

5. Cf. MHS Coll., Series §, vi, 30.* 


378 INCREASE MATHER 


that, if Dudley were not antagonized, the old government of the 
college might be restored; or, quite as probably, he may have 
chosen his position because he did not wish to stir up further the 
existing dissensions between the Brattles, Leverett, and Pember- 
ton, favored by Dudley, and himself. | 

The governor, soon after his arrival in Boston, went to see 
Cotton Mather. There he got a piece of good political advice, 
which has been often unjustly interpreted. Mather told Dudley 
not to let it be supposed that his acts were dictated by Byfield, 
Leverett, and their followers, or by the two ministers of the 
Second Church. That he advised a course controlled neither by 
himself nor his father, nor by their foes, speaks well for his wisdom 
and disinterestedness. The governor, however, informed Leverett 
and Byheld that he had been warned against them. Naturally 
they grew hot against Cotton Mather, and he against that 
“wretch,” Joseph Dudley.°. 

In the next year Increase Mather expressed his opinion of the 
new executive, not publicly in Boston, but in a letter to the Earl 
of Nottingham.? He wrote: 


The Generality of People throughout the Province have not the 
Love for the present Govern™ M? Dudley that were to be desired. The 
old prejudices occasioned by his former mismanagements are revived. 
And his Conduct since his being Govern has in divers Instances been 
very dissatisfactory to those that have been his best friends. 

Prudent men with us cannot but think that it would conduce much 
for the Interest of her Majesties affairs in the Province, as well as be 
for the happiness of her Subjects here, might they have a Govern — 
that should have the Love of the People, the Consideration whereof I 
humbly leave with Yor Lordships wisdom. 


Now we are asked to believe that Mather hoped to use Dudley 
in the service of his personal desires, and that his hostility to the 
governor was dictated by his failure of his hopes for renewed 
influence at Harvard. These hopes, if he had them, were not 
defeated for several years after the letter just quoted was written. 
There we find him urging a successor for the man whom, we are 
told, he was eager to conciliate in order to make him the tool of 
private ambition. 

Meanwhile at Harvard the two Brattles had regained office. 
In 1707 Willard died, and there can be no doubt that the question 


6. MHS Coll., Series 1, iii, 137. 7. Col. Soc. Pub., xix, 155. 





OLD AGE AND THE NEW CENTURY 379 


of who was to succeed him interested the Mathers deeply. It is 
probably not unsafe to guess that Cotton had hopes for himself, 
and his father for him. But, actually, John Leverett, old foe of 
the Mathers, was elected president. He had eight votes, Increase 
Mather had three, and Cotton Mather but one. That the elder 
Mather, sixty-eight years old, could still win more than one fifth. 
of the votes cast, testified that his power had not entirely gone.® 

Before this election at Harvard, there had appeared in England 
a pamphlet directed against Dudley. It contained all the things 
that Cooke, Sewall, and the rest of the governor’s foes would have 
liked to say, and raked up every possible charge against him. Al- 
most certainly Cotton Mather had a hand in it, as in a second 
pamphlet which followed Dudley’s answer to the first.? All we 
need remember is that Cotton Mather, and not Increase, seems 
to have been associated in this excursion into pamphleteering. 
Dudley, in referring to the attack, spoke only of Cotton Mather, 
and it does not seem possible to prove that Increase had any 
connection with the affair.'° Perhaps he sympathized with what 
Cotton did; perhaps he questioned his course, as he did on a more 
personal matter." All we can be sure of is that Increase Mather, 
whatever his motives, after consistent opposition to Dudley, may 
have advocated his becoming governor, certainly welcomed him, 
and, immediately after he began to serve, saw that he had not 
reformed, and schemed to oust him. It seems probable, too, that 
outwardly Mather was deferential to the governor, though he had 
little to do with him. The office Dudley held deserved respect, 
and he was the emissary of the queen. For a minister to attack 
him publicly would be neither polite nor safe. 

But in 1707, after Leverett had been elected president of 
Harvard, after Dudley had retreated from his former assertion 
that the old college charter was dead and had put it into force 
once more, thus preventing any “reform” in its constitution 
such as might be desired by Mather and his brethren,” both 
Cotton and Increase were restrained no longer by official cour- 
tesy or prudence. Both wrote sharp letters to Dudley, accusing 
him of a variety of crimes, many of which he had not committed, 
but all of which were popularly laid at his door. Increase Mather’s 

8. Quincy, History, 1, 156. 

g. For the pamphlets, see MHS Coll., Series 5, vi, 29*-131.* 

10. Ibid, 200. 


TTI. OT; 
12. Quincy, History, 1, 159, 201. 


380 INCREASE MATHER 


’ 


letter has been called “vituperative.” It is hardly that. It is a 
frank and harsh recital of Dudley’s faults as the writer saw them, 
but it is guardedly phrased and its tone was not improper for 
the admonition of a pastor to one of his flock. Not rancor or 
vituperation but stern rebuke is its dominating note. Cotton’s 
shows a more intemperate vocabulary, and infinitely more heat. 
The difference of the two Mathers in nature and in age appears 
nowhere more clearly than in these letters. 

To write them was a foolish move. Dudley made the obvious 
retort, asking why, if he was such a sinner, he had not been told 
of it before, and hinting that the defeat of the Mathers’ hopes at 
Harvard lay back of their outburst. Probably it did, and if so, 
we must charge Increase Mather with one more hasty piece of 
imprudence arising from his quick temper and the sharp disap- 
pointment he felt at the coming of further perils to New England 
orthodoxy. 

From now on there could be no reconciliation between Dudley 
and the Mathers. He wrote that he was pursued by them, and 
they seem to have written and schemed in an effort to replace him 
by Sir Charles Hobby or any other candidate less likely to favor 
the innovators in religion and education.* In 1709 Sir Henry 
Ashurst wrote Increase Mather, telling him that there was reason 
to hope for a new governor. It is interesting to find that he also 
said: “I hope you will use yr endeavors by an Act of yr Assembly 
to settle y* University upon so sure a foundation y¢ it shall not be 
in the power of any succeeding Gov: to defeate ye religious de- 


signs of founders & benefactors, but that it may be a nursery of 


religion and godlinesse. The finishing of this noble work will well 
become you, as the last act of yr life; and if the Lord spare me my 
life, I shall make it my businesse to gett it confirm’d here.” % 

This sums up the Mathers’ views as to the college, as well as 
showing that they were shared abroad. It also makes it unneces- 
sary for anyone to assume personal ambition as the mainspring 
of Increase Mather’s course toward Dudley, his foes at Harvard, 
and the innovators in the church. It is quite as easy, and quite 
as just, to believe that his stand was determined by what he, his 
brethren, and such men as Ashurst, saw as the need of presery- 
ing valuable traditions and protecting the interests of the alumni 
of, and donors to, Congregational Harvard. 


13. MHS Coll., Series 1, 111, 126ff. 14. Lbid., Series 6, v, 163, 173, 199. 
15. Ldid., 199. 


i En me 


OLD AGE AND THE NEW CENTURY 381 


Whether his motives were good or bad, Mather’s political 
power had gone, and his letters did not affect the course of 
affairs. Perhaps he became impatient at the little success Sir 
Henry Ashurst had in England, for he seems to have turned 
on him in a sharp letter of criticism.%® This did not permanently 
affect their friendship, however, and they continued to corre- 
spond as to the state of public affairs. 

As his political interests resulted in quarrels, so the old ani- 
mosities did not die away. Colman was criticized by some of his 
flock for being too docile in his relations with the Mathers,*? and 
Pemberton found plenty to do in making known that he for one 
did not forget the bickerings of 1700.77 One remembers Sewall’s 
immortal description of how “Mr. Pemberton with extraordinary 
Vehemency said, (capering with his feet) If the Mathers order’d 
it, I would shoot him thorow. I told him he was in a passion. He 
said he was not in a Passion. I said, it was so much the worse.” *9 

On the other hand we find Mather, nearly twenty years after 
he left Harvard, speaking well of William Brattle.2° Year by 
year he grew less active in current controversies, and thus he 
came to be more tolerant in his attitude toward those of his ~ 
neighbors who once had differed from him. 

In general church affairs he continued active. His books 
expressed his views on important questions of the day and he 
joined in the “Proposals” of 1705, thus linking himself with a 
movement which sought to change the old style Congregational- 
ism. It came to nothing, partly because of the trend of the times, 
and especially because, in John Wise, the innovators met a con- 
servative who excelled them all in the brilliance with which he 
defended the old order. Curiously enough he, who fought for 
the former method of church government, seems to-day the pro- 
gressive, though, in his time, his views were toward rigid con- 
servatism. The Mathers, Colman, and the others who joined 
in advocating the proposals, sought to strengthen the govern- 
ment of the church, and so to protect religion against the new 
ideas of the times. That they failed was a testimony to the 
strength of the pristine Congregational theory.” 

16. MHS Coll., Series 6, v, 216. I7.01012., 5eties 35°V, 11 99- 

18, [bid., Series 5, vi, 213. 

1g. Lbid., p. 291. 

20. J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, 111, 201, 202. 


a1. W. Walker, History, pp. 202ff., and Creeds and Platforms, pp. 483ff.; H. M. 
Dexter, Congregationalism, pp. 491ff. 


382 INCREASE MATHER 


Mather opposed publicly the doctrine taught by George 
Keith,” an episcopal missionary who came over with Dudley,” 
once more showing a curious stupidity if his aim was to flatter the 
governor in the service of his own ends. His opposition was on 
doctrinal points, and that he was not aiming towards the old 
scheme of having no churches but Congregational, is conclusively 
brought out by his approving presence at the ordination of a 
Baptist minister in Boston.%* He was interested in the Jew, 
Judah Monis, and wrote a preface to one of his books. On the 
other hand, he expressed himself with heat when part of his own 
church separated to form a new congregation, not hostile in 
principles, but desirous of more space in which to worship. 

There is no doubt, too, that Mather was sincerely interested 
in the progress of Yale College. Certainly he had nothing to 
do with the inauguration of the plan which established it, but 
his advice was sought.?? He suggested some means by which 
economy could be secured, advocated that ministers should be 
overseers, inveighed against public Commencements, hinted at 
the dangers to be feared from the civil government, and stated his 
belief that in the new college “ye welfare of yor Colony & Pos- 
terity is greatly concerned.” To him, as to many others, Yale 
seemed likely to replace Harvard as the fountainhead of Con- 
gregationalism,.”* That it did not long remain as orthodox as its 
founders wished, was a sore blow. 

There is some possibility that Cotton Mather tried to divert 
the bounty of Hollis from Harvard to Yale.2? If so, it shows no 


22. In his ““Some Remarks On a late Sermon, Preached at Boston in New-England, — 


By George Keith, M.A.” Boston, 1702. Cf. Religious History of New England, p. 218. 

23. MHS Coll., Series 5, vi, 58. 

24. I. Backus, 4 Church History, ii, 50. 

2$. MHS Proe., lii, 292. 

26. C. Robbins, History, pp. 65, 66; MHS Coll., Series 3, v, 215. In Autobiography 
Mather wrote: “The year 1713 has been troublesome on occasion of a new meeting 
house, which some desired might be built in the north end of Boston. I declared that if 
they would set their meeting house in a place convenient for the prosperity of their end 
of the town, I would not only consent, but contribute to them towards it, & would do 
all for them that a father could do for his children.... At the same time I told them 
that if they set it in a place spoken of, too near the other meeting house, I would have 
nothing to do with them. Some of them that came to me in the name of all the rest, 
promised me they would not do it if grievous to me. Nevertheless, they do it. I am 
persuaded that a blasting from God will be upon them, first or last.” 

27. Cf. E. Oviatt, The Beginnings of Yale, chap. 4. Mather’s letter, printed in F. B. 
Dexter, Documentary History of Yale University, pp- 6, 7, makes it clear that his advice 
was asked after the plan was under way. 

28. Cf. Oviatt, op. cit., chap. 5. 29. Quincy, History, i, 227ff. 





OLD AGE AND THE NEW CENTURY 383 


more than that his interest was in no college as such, but in the 
spread of what he saw as good education. Whatever his attempts 
upon Hollis may have been, and however they seem to us , Judging 
from our modern point of view of loyalty to one university in and 
for itself, we should remember that Increase Mather does not 
seem to have been involved in his son’s active proselyting for 
Yale. The father is, however, accused of having fomented dis- 
sension at Harvard to discredit its administration. Perhaps he 
did wish to bring disgrace upon his successors; perhaps he acted 
because he felt the issue was one of right and wrong; and perhaps 
he did no more than exert the prerogative of alumni in all genera- 
tions, and asserted his right to tell the leaders of Harvard how it 
should be administered. 

With Stoddard he debated in print the old question of bap- 
tism.3* He joined his son and son-in-law in furthering singing at! 
church, he continued to work for the Indians, and he aided in. 
keeping up, year by year, a steady influx of new members to the 
Second Church.34 It was to him that Michael Wigglesworth ' 
wrote, urging that some redress be made for the injuries done to 
innocent persons in the witchcraft prosecution.3s That he was 
chosen as the man who should take up the matter with the 
brethren and with Dudley shows that he was, at once, not quite 
without influence and not suspected of favoring all that the 
Salem Court had done. Samuel Sewall, who found Cotton Mather 
often a trying neighbor, was consistent in his devotion to Increase. 
In 1719 we find him sending the old divine a ring, “as a Token of 
Thankfullness and Respect.” %° From his brother’s widow, in 
London, Mather received a legacy of twenty-five pounds,3? and 
from “Mrs. Mary Edwards” he had a similar bequest of five 
pounds.3* In 1718 he made his own will. It is not only a legal 
document but a statement of faith, and deserves reading aside 


30. Cf. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, iii, 187. 

31. Ibid., 11, 118, 119; The New Englander, iv, 350ff.; Walker, Creeds and Platforms, 
p. 282, and 4 History, pp. 180-182. 

32. The Second Church in Boston. Commemorative Services, pp. vii-viil. 

33. Cf. J. W. Ford, Some Correspondence, pp. 83ff., 95ff., and MHS Coll., Series 6, 
Vy 347s 355+ : 

34. The number of new members added during these years was 338. This-figure I 
have taken from a manuscript now in the possession of the Second Church. 

35. MHS Coll., Series 4, vili, 645. 

36. Ibid., Series 6, ii, 103. 

37. New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xlv, 296. 

38. His receipt for this is in the Haverford College Library. 


384 INCREASE MATHER 


from the information it contains. Cotton was the chief heir, and 
young Mather Byles, to become a famous wit and a delightful 
figure in the annals of Revolutionary Boston, was, as Mather’s 
grandson, to have a fourth part of the estate, provided he entered 
the ministry. And at the end we read: “I do hereby signify to 
my executor that it is my mind & will yt my Negro servant 
called [Speedgood?] shall not be sold... but I do... give him his 
liberty.” 39 

Thoughts of death held no terror for him. Year by year he 
came more and more to feel that his work for God upon earth 
was done, and that the grave was the gateway for his entry to 
eternal peace. That he was weary is not to be wondered at. He 
was eighty years old in 1720. His “ephialtes” tormented him, 
and more serious physical ailments gave him hours of pain.’ 
Nor had his last years been marked by success. If, in his church, 
the wounds of 1700 were healing, and no new changes seemed to 
threaten seriously, if his writing went well and each year added 
to the number of his publications, he had failed politically, and, 
we may think, he had been unwise in the steps he took. He had 
not conquered his temper, and, whether he wrote to reprove in 
good set terms a neighbor who seems to have delighted in 
_ malicious gossip,” or indulged in what Sewall called “plain home- 
dealing” “ with Dudley, he proved that the quick anger, known 
to Randolph and the Committee on Trade and Plantations, had 
not weakened with years. And ina single event of 1714 there was 
sorrow enough to explain many melancholy hours. 


In 1714 his wife died. For more than fifty years she had shared 


his work, and if we can be sure of anything, we can be sure that 
the union had been one of unbroken faith and love. Now, if ever, 
a reliance upon some power greater than those of earth was 
needed to carry him through his bereavement. Nor was he at a 


loss as to where to look for it. Speaking of his wife he said, “the: — 


Lord has now taken away that Blessing, I yet say, Blessed be ’ 
the Name of the Lord. And as David said of his Dead child, so ; 
say I concerning my Dear Dead Consort, I shall go to her; (I | 


trust in Christ that it will not be long first) but she shall not 
return to me. Let the Will of the LORD be Done.” * 


39. New England Historical and Genealogical Register, v, 447. 

40. Autobiography. 41. American Antiquarian Society Proceedings, xiv, 313, 314. 

42. MHS Coll., Series 5, vi, 212. 

43. 1. Mather, “A Sermon Concerning Obedience & Resignation to the Will of God 
in Every Thing. Occasion’d by the Death of that Pious Gentlewoman, Mrs. Mariah 


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INCREASE MATHER IN OLD AGE 


4' 


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OLD AGE AND THE NEW CENTURY 385 


In 1715 Increase Mather married Ann Cotton, widow of his 
nephew John Cotton of Hampton. She was the daughter of an 
old friend,** and a member of his church.“ She can never have 
filled the place Maria Mather’s death had left, but her devotion 
may have brought some consolation to the old man. 

Not all of his last years were given up to defeat, disappoint- 
ment, sickness, and bereavement, nor did they ever conquer his 
spirit. It would be easy for such troubles as he underwent to make 
most men mere bitter contemners of the world. And, as one 
reads his autobiography, one finds there the heart of a man who 
had his hours of sadness, hits moments of wrath, and tasted often 
the gall of disappointed hopes. He longed for England, probably, 
though he knew he was too old to go; he longed for the spirit 
his father found in the colony, but he must have realized how 
irrevocably it had gone. Yet he did not repine.' He found that 
he had many causes for thanksgiving, and duly wrote them down. 
He found solace for woes in long hours at his desk; he found 
peace in devotion to study, to prayer, and to writing. And. 
constantly he cherished the vision of a life to come and of the , 
realization of those dreams which had made life livable for him — 
his dreams of God and Christ. 

So in his age we see the climax of more than one side of 
his activity and his character. Then was his greatest literary 
productiveness, then his tolerance found its strongest concrete 
expression, and then his vices—temper, zeal for political 
intrigue, and longing to check the free development of men’s 
religious institutions by narrowing and organizing the group 
which controlled them — all found a chance to reveal themselves. 
So also the faith that sustained him from boyhood flowered fully 
in making him meek in the face of adverse fate. And, finally, in 
one stroke he was able, when he was eighty years old, to show 
that his broad interests had served him well and to take his place 
with scientific liberals of the eighteenth century. 

Cotton Mather, one remembers, did valiant work in intro- 
ducing inoculation for smallpox into the colonies.*7 For his pains 


Mather, Late Consort of Increase Mather, D.D. Who Entred into her Everlasting Rest, 
on the Lords Day, April. 4. 1714.” Boston, 1714. See also Autobiography. 

44. Cf. J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, iii, 5. She was fifty-two years old in 1715. 

45. Captain Thomas Lake. 46. C. Robbins, History, p. 239. 

47. See G. L. Kittredge, Introduction to the Cleveland, 1921, reprint of I. Mather, 
Several Reasons, etc., and MHS Proc., xlv, 446, 447, 470, 471; MHS Coll., Series 1, 1x, 


27k, 


386 INCREASE MATHER 


he got criticism. The populace was not ready for the advance 
which the Puritan clergy favored, and the people’s dislike for 
intellectual tyranny from the elders expressed itself in a bomb 
hurled into the window of the younger Mather’s house. The 
advocates of inoculation are the more to be praised because they 
were ahead of current thought in Boston, and because experience 
of later generations seems to have confirmed their wisdom. 
That Cotton Mather, Colman, and other men, in their youth or 
middle age, took up the movement, is much to their credit, but 
they should normally have been more in touch with the latest 
science than a man whose career spanned sixty years of the 
seventeenth century, and whose age might have exempted him 
from the responsibility of keeping up with current medicine. But 
we have seen Mather’s interest in science and his practical view 
of his mission. If science could save life, it mattered not how new 
its doctrine or how unpopular. Mather never feared the mob, 
and hastened to do his share in the war of pamphlets which 
marked the coming of a new and beneficent medical reform 
to Massachusetts. 

In this is the final answer to the charge that he was of the 
seventeenth century alone, that he was a myopic theologian, the 
foe of science and blind to progress, and the proof that his mind 
was so broad and so active, even after he had lived for some years 
in a troublous world, that he could plunge eagerly into a new 
warfare for the service of mankind. When he was seventy years 
old, he wrote, excusing himself from undertaking new public 
office: “That which was a Recreation to me formerly, is now a 
Burden....I may now rationally expect Liberty and Rest. 
Nothing suiteth with my Age so much as Retirement and Rest.” 48 
Yet, ten years later, his spirit was brave enough to carry him once 
more into the arena, there to do battle for the saving of human 
life. 

It is pleasant, too, to remember that as the vague scientific 
questing of his younger days developed into a definite service to 
his countrymen in his age, they did their part for him by offering 
to fulfil for their old leader one of his dearest dreams. In 1716 the 
churches sought to send Mather on an embassy to England.49 
Nothing could have gratified him more. Nothing speaks more 
eloquently as to the sway he still held in the hearts of good church- 
goers in Boston. But there is pathos, too, in the thought that 


48. MHS Coll., Series 6, i, 394- 49. Autobiography; Parentator, p. 194. 


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OLD AGE AND THE NEW CENTURY 387 


opportunity came too late. He was too old, too determined to 
end his life quietly, and too resigned under disappointment and 
defeat, to be stirred even by the chance to see once more his 
beloved England. He was content to stay in Boston, there to 
dream of London while he lived out the little span of life which 
remained to him. 

“To preach constantly at fourscore, and to so large an audience, 
and without notes, is a rare example, and scarcely to be found in 
history,” declared one of his friends in England.s° His was a 
“bright, wise, strong old age.” ** His efforts to resign from his 
pulpit were vain, and his congregation begged him to continue.” 
But after 1720 he began to realize the weight of his years. “Be 
sure, you don’t pray, that you may Live beyond Fourscore!” 
was his counsel to his son. In 1722 bad news came from New 
Haven, where there were events which seemed to herald Yale 
College’s falling away from the old faith. The shock and his 
weakness were too much for Increase Mather. He never left his ° 
house again.s! But even in his last months he talked of Con- 
gregational and Presbyterian unity, and expressed his belief 
that Boston would survive as a godly town. He saw no “‘settled ; 


good times” on earth until the second coming of Christ, and 


reasserted once more his belief in the religion of early New Eng- 
land. Most of all he warned against a “Lifeless Religion” and an 
“Trreligious Life.” 5 

At the end of 1722 “he was extremely tortured and enfeebled 
with an obstinate Hicket.” °° Sometimes he was delirious, and 
sometimes mental tortures came with the fear that he might not 
be saved. He called to have the seventy-first psalm read to him 
again and again; and bade his son pray for him that he might , 
“do good while he lived, and Honour Christ in his death.” To 
Hollis he sent the message that he was going to the land of the 
living, for “this Poor World is the Land of the Dying.” 57 His 


50. J. Belknap, History, itt, 344. 

51. Parentator, p. 196. 

52. C. Robbins, History, p. 64. 

53. Parentator, p. 200. 

54. Ibid., (p. 201) says that Mather’s illness was largely due to an account of 
recent happenings at New Haven. In MHS Coll., Series 2, iv, 297, there is a letter to 
the Mathers, dated September 25, speaking of the growth of episcopacy at Yale. The 
connection is obvious. 

55. Parentator, pp. 201-203. 

56. Ibid., p. 207. 

57. Lbid., p. 209. 


388 INCREASE MATHER 


pain grew more severe, and when Sewall came to see him on July 
30, he found him “agonizing and Crying out, Pity me! Pity 
me!” Sewall writes “I told him God pity’d him, to which he 
assented and seem’d pacify’d.” 5 

On Friday August 23, a “Sacramental Lecture” was held in 
Boston. In the eighteenth-century town, the centre of New Eng- 
land, still far from the city we know to-day, but with changes 
on every hand, which would have impressed Richard Mather, 
faithful Congregationalists gathered to hear Mr. Thacher 
preach. No one of them can have lived to forget the thrill of 
startled emotion that ran through the audience when from the 
pulpit they were told that the oldest and greatest of the New 
England divines had died that noon.%? 

He died in Cotton Mather’s arms. In his agony, his son gave 
him strength by reading the Scriptures, throughout his life his 
inexhaustible source of comfort in all the struggles of this world. 
As he grew weaker with each spasm of pain, Cotton said, ‘‘This 
Day thou shalt be in Paradise. Do you Believe it, Syr, and Re- 
joice in the Views and Hopes of it?” And, knowing his work was 
done, and mercifully relieved from the sense of his own unworthi- 
ness that had tormented him before, the old man found it in his 
heart to say with his dying breath, “I do! I do! I do!” © 

58. MHS Coll., Series 5, vii, 325, 326. 


59. Ibid., 326. 
60. Parentator, p. 210. 


ee Sn het nee 


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— eee ee 


CHAPTER XXI 


INCREASE MATHER 


ATHER’S was a “Greater Funeral, than had ever been seen 

for any Divine, in these . . . parts of the World. The Honour- 
able, William Dummer, Esq; who was then lieutenant Governour 
and Commander in Chief; and his Honourable, Ancient, Cordial 
Friend, Samuel Sewall, Esq; the Chief Judge, of the Province; 
with the President of the College,’ John Leverett, ‘Mr. Peter 
Thacher of Milton, Mr. Wadsworth,” and ‘Mr. Colman” were 
“they that held the Pall; Before which, One Hundred and Three- 
score Scholars of the College, whereof he had once been the 
President, walked in Order.” There “were a vast number of 
Followers and Spectators,” among them “about Fifty Ministers 
... All with an Uncommon sadness in their Countenance.” * 

So, on August twenty-ninth, 1723, Mather was buried beside 
his first wife “in the North burying place” on Snow Hill. The 
funeral procession passed the North Meeting House, the child of 
his own church, “and so up by Capt. Hutchinson’s and along by 
his own House,” with its deserted desk in the lonely, book-lined 
study, “and up Hull-Street,” ? to the burying-ground, whence 
those who followed his coffin could look over the green fields of a 
country town and the blue water of the river toward the villages 
of Charlestown and Cambridge. “The vast number att his 
funeral” 3 saw in the pall-bearers their governor and other 
prominent men of their Boston, and we should not forget that 
among them was Leverett, Mather’s old foe, Colman, who had 
tasted the bitter rebukes the erstwhile president could give, and 
who himself had been by no means respectful to the Mathers, as 
well as faithful old Samuel Sewall, and the younger leaders in 
piety, Thacher and Wadsworth. Old quarrels had passed. Old 
differences were reconciled. In 1723 neither Leverett nor Colman 
could fail to do honor to a man who had served as well as man 
could serve. They had breadth to forgive private disputes, in 
order to do honor to Mather’s high qualities; and Cotton Mather 


1. Parentator, pp. 211, 212; MHS Coll., Series 5, vii, 326. 
Belbid. 
3. New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xv, 199. 


390 INCREASE MATHER 


_ knew that the old man who used to delight in his last years in the 


_ thought that Bostonians were to him “a Loving People” 4 would 
\’ rejoice that his forgiveness of his enemies should be marked by 


their being asked to join the friends about his grave. 

Throughout New England ministers preached funeral sermons 
for the lost leader. Foxcroft, Cotton Mather, and Colman did 
the same office in Boston, and for more than two months the 
neighboring ministers took turns each week in preaching condo- 
lence to the Second Church.‘ 

Surely, if he had lived, Willard would have joined the mourn- 
ers. Surely Cooke would have done so, had he not died in 1715. 
He was a clean fighter, and a sincere lover of his country. He 
hated Mather’s political views, but he never descended to the 
point where he attacked his rival’s motives or character, and he 
would have been the first to wish to share in reverencing the best 
in the man whom he had fought. 

In England Boyle, Baxter, Howe, and Nathaniel Mather were 
dead, but there were still men, nobles and commoners, to whom 
the latest news from Boston brought some personal sense of loss. 
They read in The British ‘fournal that there had “died the 
Reverend Dr. Increase Mather, in the 85 Year of his Age, after 
a Life of many Years Service in England and Ireland, as well as 


in New England, and of many Sufferings, by a painful Sickness, 


in which he languished a long Time, before he expired. He was 
born at Dorchester, Fune 21, 1639, and signalized himself in many 
Publick Appearances; but especially in the Agency for his Coun- 
try in the British Court, and as President of Harvard-College. He 
was Minister of the old North-Church at Boston 62 Years.”® 

We need little other reminder of his position in the eyes of his 
contemporaries. They knew him as the man who had written 
most, and had been most widely read, in New England, for fifty 
years of its history. They saw his work as “practical” and 
“seasonable,’ and they bought it year by year as each new 
volume came out. They knew that he was read abroad, that books 
of his were printed in England, in Scotland, in Holland, and trans- 
lated into Dutch, German, French, and Indian. They would have 
been at a loss to find any American of his generation more worthy 
to be called a literary leader. 

4. Parentator, p.221. 


5. Lbid., pp. 212, 218ff.; B. Colman, The Prophet’s Death. Boston, 1723. 
6. The British Fournal, Oct. 19, 1723. 





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INCREASE MATHER 391 


A man who neither shared all his beliefs, nor was content to 
follow wherever he led, one who had joined in reviling him and 
had been sharply censured in his turn, spoke of Mather in terms 
which are doubly precious to us, because they give us the esti- 
mate of a man who knew him, and, at the same time, of one who 
was by no means prejudiced in his favor. Benjamin Colman said, 
of his learning: 


He loved his study to a kind of excess; and in a manner lived in it 
from his youth to a great old age; where he gave himself to reading 
and doctrine; for he especially studied his Bible, and was mighty in the 
Scriptures; with which he began and ended; while, for sixty years 
together, he made himself master of all the learning of past ages, or 
that was passing in his own times, that was needful to furnish out an 
accomplished Divine. 

A most excellent preacher he was, using great plainness of speech, 
with much light and heat, force and power....He was very happy 
in his method, which was always distinct and perspicuous.... At 
the same time, there was a vein of learning and argument running 
through these laboured and plain discourses, which was a sufficient 
entertainment for the strongest and most curious (but serious) mind. 
...1It was a soul-searching ministry....His face as well as words 
were enough to teach and constrain devotion.’ 


His public services were recognized, and his contemporaries 
knew that no other American had performed any such diplomatic 
service as his. He had been the unquestioned leader of his people 
for more than half a century, always in the church, often in 
politics, and invariably in those human affairs where the example 
of a strong and active life can be made to count. ‘“‘But what is 
more than barely to preach Christ Jesus the Lord, your excel- 
lent pastor lived here in the flesh by the faith in Him, in a holy 
conformity to His blessed life and law.” § Once more Colman 
spoke justly, forgetful of personal prejudice, and recorded for us 
the estimate of those with whom Increase Mather lived. 

Nor need we go further for a general summing up of his place 
among his fellow men, than another paragraph of Colman’s: 


He was the patriarch and prophet among us, if any could be so 
called: a holy man, and a man of God, holding fast the faithful word, 
and holding forth the word of life... . The prophets of old were sober, 


7. W. B. Sprague, Annals, i, 158 (quoted from Colman). 8. Lbid. 


392 INCREASE MATHER 


grave, wise, virtuous, thoughtful, solid and judicious men, as well as 
devout and gracious. .. . In these respects truly the signs of a prophet 
of God were upon him. He had also the courage, zeal and boldness 
of a prophet in what he judged and esteemed to be the cause of God, 
his truth, his worship and his holiness. 


Such words we shall hear applied to Mather, so long as we 
stay in the seventeenth century, delighting in the fresh green 
of Snow Hill, breathing the clear air of a country seaport, and 
rejoicing in the space and neatness of the community spread before 
us. But, when we give up this, and the stifling intellectual at- 
mosphere we are taught to believe existed in the Boston of 1700, 
for our own Boston with its smoke, noise, crowds, foreign lan- 
guages, and liberty, measured by modern tests, what shall we say 
then of our old friend Increase Mather, who is now no more than 
a dingy canvas portrait on the wall of amuseum? Glad as we may 
be to exchange a town of native English and American for a city 
of many partially digested nationalities, shall we part without a 
pang from the old man who once knew New England and its 
people in such a way as to find the key to leadership in its coun- 
sels and their hearts? Shall we give up a country of traditions 
and venerated institutions, bad sanitation, high ideals, and strong 
leaders, for one which rejoices in the new, the untried, the progress 
it has made in the art of living, its freedom to think anything or 
nothing, and its readiness to follow any prophet who can make 
his voice heard, with unmixed joy and a sure conviction that we 
have found a better world? 

However we may feel, when we come to our “historical esti- 
mate” of Mather, we find much more to say of him than we can 
safely postulate as to most of our prominent contemporaries. 
Right or wrong, living in good times or bad, in intellectual free- 
dom or slavery, he stands in literature as a man who achieved 
unquestioned and long-continued leadership in his own country 
and his own time. No American author before John Wise and 
Benjamin Franklin rivalled him in the writing of English. He 
followed a definite creed, whether he preached or wrote, a creed 
of simplicity in diction and structure; and working thus, he 
presented few pages or few sermons which have not the stamp of 
sound style. Brilliance is usually to seek. Rhetorical ornament, 
perfect finish, or the precise reflection of emotion in words, we do 
not often find. But test him by comparison with his countrymen 


INCREASE MATHER 393 


and he achieves superior rank, and place him among seventeenth- 
century English preachers and writers, and he may still stand 
unashamed. He did not write as Dryden did, and his style kept 
archaic turns, and a looseness of construction that some English- 
men left behind. But his best pages and his best discourses from 
the pulpit are not surpassed by any but the seventeenth-century 
English writers whom we call “great” in literary history. 

As a scholar, too, the range of his reading, and his constant use 
of it, give him a proud place in his time.? Yet he was no slave to 
authority. He valued experience and observation as highly as 
learned dogma, and more than once his voice was heard on the 
side of tolerance for ideas and creeds which were new or different 
from his own. This breadth of view he carried into politics, and 
in that field he showed a skill unequalled in his generation among 


his countrymen. The result of his diplomacy was a governmental 
system which gave New England privileges enjoyed by no other .. 
English colony in America. It remained in operation for genera- 


tions after his death. As a public force, as a leader of men, inside 
the church and out of it, there is no American of his era to whom 
he can be compared. He was, as has often been said, throughout 
his active life the one outstanding and dominant figure in the 
history of New England. 

All this speaks for character, and there can be no doubt as to 
the strength of his. Where he seems deficient to us is in imagina- 
tion, in the ability to conceive of better human institutions than 
those he knew, in the capacity to dream great dreams, to specu- 
late romantically and lead men to realize his visions. We judge 
correctly in charging him with a lack of these qualities, if in so 
doing we say that he lacked the fanciful, the restless questing of 
the free imagination, where human affairs and human civiliza- 
tion were under discussion. He was not the man to evolve a new 
ideal political theory, to dream of Utopias on earth, or to turn 
the spectacle of human life into poetry or drama expressing the 
beauty of this world and revealing glimpses of inspired vision for 
its betterment. But we may admit this only when we qualify 
it in the same breath by saying that Mather did not lack the 
traits necessary for the sort of achievement to which he never 
aspired. That he had them is proved by his attitude toward his 
religion. There is imagination everywhere in his visualization of 


g. In his books written up to and including 1701, Mather referred to 928 books or 
authors. 


a 


394 INCREASE MATHER 


Heaven, of Hell, of angels, of devils, and in his ecstatic feeling of 
communion with God and Christ through prayer. No dreamer 
of dreams, no poet wrapt in mystic visions, ever did more than 
Mather did every time he knelt to wrestle with his sins, in pas- 
sionate pleas for forgiveness and protestations of his love for the 
eternal fountainheads of his faith. Mysticism was the core of his 
religious attitude, but its outward expression was constantly 
practical. Therefore, judging him as we do by the fruits of his 
labor, we judge him falsely. Then, too, we have lost touch with 
the spirit which gave life to his devotion, and forget accordingly 
how real it was, and how thoroughly it called into play qualities 
of mind which, in another age, might have found an outlet in 
emotional and artistic expression. Colman knew, nor should we 
forget, how much true exaltation of the human spirit he described 
when he wrote of Mather: “But the first and last subject and 
object of all his sermons and prayers, among you, was Jesus Christ 
and Him crucified. This only he desired to know among you. 
With this he began, and with this he ended his ministry. ...He 
saw much of His glory, and spake often of it with great pleasure 
and delight. ... Christ was in him the hope of glory.” » 

Before we leave our “‘historical weighing” of Mather we should 
not fail to remind ourselves that, whatever he was, he was not 
a man who “opposed every liberal movement among the New 
England clergy.” * What “liberal movements”’ there were in his 
day is hard to decide, but perhaps the Half-Way Covenant was 
one. This Mather supported heartily. For him to help in 
ordaining a Baptist was unquestioned liberalism. To join some 
others of the clergy in advocating inoculation in spite of the 
assaults of the people was liberalism. To advocate union between 
Congregationalists and Presbyterians was the sort of thing to 
which even to-day we should not deny the name of liberalism. If 
Mather had opposed all these things, he might be accused of nar- 
rowness. As it 1s, wherever any seventeenth-century Puritan can 
be exonerated from such a charge, he can. 

So also we are told that “he was dictatorial and domineering, 
bearing himself arrogantly towards all underlings, unyielding in 
opposition to whoever crossed his will.” * Dictatorial he may 
have been in his sermons, the poorest basis upon which to bring 

10, W. B. Sprague, Annals, i, 158. 


11. W. P. Trent and B. W. Wells, Colonial Prose and Poetry, ii, 216. 
12. Cambridge History of American Literature, i, 49. 


a a 


INCREASE MATHER 395 


such a charge. Aside from what he spoke or printed in his capac- 
ity as minister, where he could hardly have been other than an 
asserter of the law, it is hard to find arrogance in his dealings 
with inferiors, nor does his tribute to Brattle suggest implacable 
enmity toward those who disagreed with him, or arrogance to his 
subordinates. Willard “crossed his will” in 1697, and in 1700 
Mather did him a literary service. John Wise challenged a cause 
the Mathers favored, and helped to defeat it, and Increase paid 
him by aiding to win acceptance for one of his son’s books.’ 

Of course he was not “a calculating dictator,” except when 
he dictated measures in which he had the support of what he con- 
sidered to be the best public opinion; nor did he ever rule the 
press “with an iron hand.” ™ But the strangest charge of all is 
that he was “wholly lacking in intellectual curiosity.” * To 
say this of a man who was a divine and yet bought and read the 
latest science, applied a scientific method to prove what he be- 
leved to be the facts of theology, followed up an interest in 
astronomy, formed a scientific society, and espoused the unpopu- 
lar and radical venture of inoculation, is to leave many salient 
features of his career unaccounted for. 

Such comments as we have quoted have no place in any esti- 
mate, “historical”? or “universal.” Yet, when we turn to the 
latter criterion, and try to judge him as a man not of one age but 
of all, we find manifest deficiencies in him. 

As a writer, compared with the great spokesmen of human 
thought throughout its history, he never achieved greatness. If 
his literary theory was sound, and his models good, if his devo- 
tion to the Scriptures brought to his own writing an echoing 
of the rhythms and phrasing of the original, he never rose to 
heights of universal beauty in style and never recaptured in his 
own work the genius of the translators of the English Bible. As 
a scholar, widely learned as he appeared in his own day, we must 
see him as a voluminous reader too uncritical in the use of what _ 
he read. As a scientific student, he opened no new road. His ~ 
utmost was an ability to be always in touch with the newest in 
thought, to discover the merit in what others originated, and to 
possess the courage to uphold them, however new and little 


13. Mather wrote the preface for Jeremiah Wise’s Prayer in Affliction. Boston, 
L717; 

14. The quotations are from Cambridge History of American Literature, i, 50. 

Doanl Mids, De AG: 


396 INCREASE MATHER 


favored their views. As a preacher, his influence was broad, but 
in his sermons as we read them there are but few scattered sen- 
tences which could justly be placed with the great spiritual ex- 
hortations of human history. 

Admitting this, he is still preéminent in two respects. First, he 
had an unequalled share in guiding an important era of the his- 
tory of a great nation, and his diplomacy, representing an innova- 
tion on_all that his people had known before, achieved a result 
of long-enduring influence. So, too, his work at Harvard and in 
his church was important for human development in America, 
and, indirectly, as America has grown great, in other nations. As 
a modern writer, again no prejudiced idolater at his shrine, 
declares, “That Dr. Mather was well qualified for the office of 
President, and had conducted himself in it faithfully and labo- 
riously, is attested by the history of the college, the language 
of the legislature, and the acknowledgment of his cotempora- 
ries.” ° “His conduct in this great crisis of this country,” when 
the new charter was obtained, “entitles him to unqualified ap- 
probation. It is scarcely possible for a public agent to be placed 
in circumstances more trying or critical; nor could anyone have 
exhibited more sagacity and devotedness to the true interests of 
his constituents. By his wisdom and firmness in acceding to the 
new charter, and thus assuming a responsibility of the weightiest 
kind, in opposition to his colleagues in the agency, he saved his 
country, apparently, from a rebellion or a revolution, or from 
having a constitution imposed by the will of the transatlantic 
Sovereign, possibly at the point of the bayonet.” 77 

The explanation of this, as of all else in his life, lies in the second 
of his two claims to universal fame. This was.the undying value 
of the sort of character he owned. Wherever we find a man able 
to lead a large community for half a century, inspiring them 
religiously, guiding them politically, and constantly impressing 
them with the example of a broad and useful career, we find a 
great man. Such was Mather. Essentially his life was the expres- 
sion in practical form of the intense force of an ardent faith in 
God and man. His faith was so great, and his ability to turn its 
inspiration into service was so unfailing, that his time on earth 


_ 16. Quincy, as quoted by C. Robbins, History, p. 45. Cf. Robbins’s remarks, there 
given. 
17. Quincy, History, i, 123, 124. 


INCREASE MATHER aa 


was one of constant conquest over the hearts and minds of men. 
Such greatness is never dimmed by time. 

If to-day we thread our way through busy streets, amid sights 
and sounds unknown to the seventeenth century, to that little 
oasis of quiet which we call Copp’s Hill Burying Ground, we may 
stand there beside the Mather tomb and marvel at the changes 
wrought by time since that August afternoon when Samuel 
Sewall turned sadly away from the grave of one of his oldest 
friends.*® There have been changes in manners, customs, and 
creeds, as well as in nearly every material detail of existence. But, 
if our imagination be active and our feeling for the seventeenth 
century not too unsympathetic, we may wonder how Increase 
Mather would face our world. 

I think we should find him a man whose power would not be 
vanquished by the scenes and conditions of an America of which 
he never dreamed. I think we should find him hostile to some of 
our modern institutions. His talk of “godliness,” “faithfulness,” 
and “‘service”” might seem to some of us to be mere cant, and he 
in his turn would marvel at such modern shibboleths as “one 
hundred per cent Americanism,” “efficiency,” “the voice of the 
people,” and “up-to-date religion.”” He might even exhort us to 
cease such insincere pratings, and, perhaps, we should be at a 
loss to prove that we work as hard for what we talk of in our 
“canting” as he did for his “godliness” and “service.” He might 
disturb our complacency by an outburst of anger against some 
cherished theory of our time or against some of our popularly 
elected rulers. 

But wherever there were fine human institutions, great hos- 
pitals, new discoveries of science opening vistas of hope for the 
saving and betterment of life, wise governments, good scholars, 
or strong churches, he would be the first to admire. When the 
talk was of history, of books, or of theology, wherever church 
union was broadly discussed, or the Bible still read, he would 
not only listen, but take part. Our only fear for him in a modern 
club or the faculty room of a university would be lest he might 
be too serious, too prone to sober thought, and too little blessed 
by a sense of humor. But I cannot feel that our fears would be 
justified, could we put him to the test. 


18. On the Mather tomb, cf., for example, E. MacDonald, Old Copp’s Hill, 
PP. 34ff. 


398 INCREASE MATHER 
If we had to judge of Burne-Jones and his friends only by the 


permanent records they left in art, we should jump to the con- 
clusion that they were serious-minded, preoccupied with the 
painting of fair but melancholy subjects, and possessed of no 
appreciation of the lighter side of life. We are near enough to 
them to know how they talked among themselves, we can laugh 
over their letters, and we are in no danger of picturing them as 
mortals as solemn as their art. So, perhaps, if we could know 
what Mather talked of, at Phipps’s table, or when he dined with 
Sir Francis Wheeler, if we knew what was said when he left his 
study to join his friends in the beamed front room of some Boston 
dwelling where the fire was warm and the ale was good, we might 
conclude that what we know of his business letters, of his diaries, 
written to record his serious doings and emotions, and of his 
books, designed to teach or to explain, not to amuse, does not spell 
all there is to know of his impression upon the men who could 
hear his voice. Certainly a man who took the trouble to order the 
“Cabinet of Mirth,” who came near a pun on so sober a subject 
as the views of a Puritan governor, and chose Plautus and 
Terence as travelling companions, does not seem the most likely 
candidate for the mantle of gloom in which we shroud our image 
of the conventional Puritan. 
' We cannot, alas, call Increase Mather back from “the tomb of 
the fathers.” Nor would he wish to join us, unless we could show 
him new worlds to conquer and a new path to tread in the service 
of his ideals. All that remains for us is the chance to write his 
epitaph. We may choose to take Edmund Calamy’s estimate, 
and to follow this eighteenth-century Englishman in declaring ~ 
that “Dr. Mather,...was vehemently set against all Sin and 
Impurity, and bent upon spreading Practical Godliness, and 
promoting Brotherly Love, in the whole Course of his Ministry; 
and securing the Peace and Liberties of his native Country, by his 
Conduct, to the utmost Extent of his Influence. And God was 
with him, and singularly own’d and bless’d him.” ** Or we may 
prefer to use the simpler summing up given by a modern scholar, 
no Puritan but a lover of good books and nobility of character, 
who called Mather “the greatest of the native Puritans.” 7° Still, 
I think, we shall find all such phrases inadequate. Then, perhaps, 
1g. [Samuel Mather (of Witney)]; Memoirs of the Life of the Late Reverend In- 


crease Mather, London, 1725, preface by E. Calamy. 
20. B. Wendell, Cotton Mather, p. 287. 





INCREASE MATHER 399 


we may remember that Mather’s best epitaph can never be put 
into words. The memory he would have us keep of him and the 
secret of his claim upon men of all time appear only in the deeds 
of his fourscore years of life. To realize what: he made of his 
career, and how he turned to account the human means with 
~ which he had to work, is perforce to find a friend of whom we 
can say, ““Whoso doeth these things shall never fall.” More he 
would not ask of us. 





APPENDICES 





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APPENDIX A 


MATHER’S AGENCY AND THE PLYMOUTH COLONY 


I ctve brief references here to some sources in regard to the 
presentation of Plymouth’s plea for restoration of her charter. On 
February 4, 1689, Governor Hinckley wrote Mather, thanking him 
for his services, and telling him that Wiswall was coming to England 
in Plymouth’s interests (WHS Coll/., Series 4, v, 227). On August 13, 
Sir Henry Ashurst wrote Hinckley, saying, “I send you this by worthy 
_Mr. Mather, who has been an indefatigable servant of your country.” 
([bid., p. 206.) 

On April 26, 1690, Cotton Mather wrote Hinckley, saying that 
from Increase Mather’s letters he learned the Governor of New York 
had Plymouth included in his commission, but that Increase “pro- 
cured the dropping of it,” and was told separate charters could not be 
hoped for. Accordingly he had Plymouth included with Massachu- 
setts. To this Wiswall objected, and the Solicitor-General struck out 
the clause. Therefore, Cotton Mather believed there was again 
danger that Plymouth would be annexed to New York, because of 
Wiswall’s action. (Ldid., p. 248.) 

On June 24, the General Court of Plymouth, “having information 
from England that the colony of Plimouth had been joyned to... 
New Yorke, but the same was prevented by ... Mr Mather,” and 
“‘also informed that Plymouth is likely to be annexed to Boston, al- 
though Mr. Wiswall has hindered it for the present,” voted to ask the 
towns to raise money to secure an independent charter. (Records of 
the Colony of New Plymouth in New England, edited by N. B. Shurt- 
leff, Boston, 1856, vi, 259.) 

On October 17, Wiswall wrote Hinckley asking for more money, 
and more activity on the part of the colonies. (MHS Coll., Series 4, 
Vea yu) 

In 1691, Plymouth voted to make Ashurst, Mather and Wiswall, 
their Agents. (ldid., Series 2, 111, 190.) 

On March 3, the colony voted thanks to these three men. (Records 
of the Colony of New Plymouth, etc., vi, 260.) 

In July, Wiswall wrote, urging action and saying no one in England 
has spoken a word for Plymouth. (MHS Coll., Series 4, v, 285.) 


404 APPENDICES 


On October 16, Hinckley informed Mather the colony would prefer 
annexation to Boston rather than to New York, but most wanted a 
separate charter. (MHS Coll., Series 4, v, 287 ff.) 

On October 17, he wrote Wiswall to the same effect, reminding him 
of Mather’s experience and acquaintance at court. ([did., pp. 292- 
294.) 

On November 5, Wiswall wrote attacking Mather in vague terms. 
(Lbid., p. 299.) 

From such evidence F. Baylies, in his Historical Memoir of New 
Plymouth (Boston, 1866), part iv, pp. 134-138, concludes that Mather 
was active in saving Plymouth from New York, and uniting it to 
Massachusetts, but “faint and inefficient” in striving for a separate 
charter. But Mr. Drake,in the same work (part v, pp. 99-104), points 
out that no enemy of Mather, except Wiswall, charged him with lack 
of faith to Plymouth. Moreover, Ashurst was Mather’s fellow-agent, 
and equally responsible, and no word is breathed against him. Drake 
wisely concludes the difficulty in getting a new charter was due to 
New England’s geography. John Davis, in the appendix to his 
edition of N. Morton’s New England’s Memorial (Boston, 1826), 
thinks that Wiswall’s remarks had no basis, pointing out that it was 
impossible for Plymouth to get a separate charter, however zealous 
her agents. 


APPENDIX B 


THE RETURN OF SEVERAL MINISTERS CONSULTED 
BY HIS EXCELLENCY, AND THE HONOURABLE 
COUNCIL, UPON THE PRESENT WITCHCRAFTS 

IN SALEM VILLAGE? 


Boston, June 15, 1692. 

I. The afflicted State of our poor Neighbours, that are now sufter- 
ing by Molestations from the Invisible World, we apprehend so de- 
plorable, that we think their Condition calls for the utmost help of all 
Persons in their several Capacities. II. We cannot but with all 
Thankfulness acknowledge, the Success which the merciful God has 
given unto the sedulous and assiduous Endeavors of our honourable 
Rulers, to detect the abominable Witchcrafts which have been com- 
mitted in the Country; humbly praying that the discovery of these 
mysterious and mischievous Wickednesses, may be perfected. III. 
We judge that in the prosecution of these, and all such Witchcrafts, 
there is need of a very critical and exquisite Caution, lest by too much 
Credulity for things received only upon the Devil’s Authority, there 
be a Door opened for a long Train of miserable Consequences, and 
Satan get an advantage over us, for we should not be ignorant of his 
Devices. IV. As in Complaints upon Witchcrafts, there may be 
Matters of Enquiry, which do not amount unto Matters of Presump- 
tion, and there may be Matters of Presumption which yet may not be 
reckoned Matters of Conviction; so ’tis necessary that all Proceedings 
thereabout be managed with an exceeding tenderness towards those 
that may be complained of ; especially if they have been Persons 
formerly of an unblemished Reputation. V. When the first Enquiry 
is made into the Circumstances of such as may lie under any just 
Suspicion of Witchcrafts, we could wish that there may be admitted 
as little as is possible, of such Noise, Company, and Openness, as may 
too hastily expose them that are examined: and that there may 
nothing be used as a Test, for the Trial of the suspected, the Lawful- 


1. The text given here is that of the London, 1693, edition of Mather’s Cases of 
Conscience. This document has sometimes not only been misread but misprinted. 
Cf. W. F. Poole, in his edition of T. Hutchinson’s The Witchcraft Delusion (Boston, 


1870), p. 33 n. 


406 APPENDICES 


ness whereof may be doubted among the People of God; but that the 
Directions given by such Judicious Writers as Perkins and Bernard, 
be consulted in such a Case. VI. Presumptions whereupon Persons 
may be committed, and much more Convictions, whereupon Persons 
may be condemned as guilty of Witchcrafts, ought certainly to be 
more considerable, than barely the accused Persons being repre- 
sented by a Spectre unto the Afflicted; inasmuch as ’tis an undoubted 
and a notorious thing, that a Demon may, by God’s Permission, 
appear even to ill purposes, in the Shape of an innocent, yea, and a 
vertuous Man; Nor can we esteem Alterations made in the Sufferers, 
by a Look or Touch of the Accused to be an infallible Evidence of 
Guilt; but frequently liable to be abused by the Devil’s Legerdemains. 
VII. We know not, whether some remarkable Affronts given to the 
Devils, by our disbelieving of those Testimonies, whose whole force 
and strength is from them alone, may not put a Period, unto the Prog- 
ress of the dreadful Calamity begun upon us, in the Accusation of so 
many Persons, whereof we hope, some are yet clear from the great 
Transgression laid unto their Charge. VIII. Nevertheless, We cannot 
but humbly recommend unto the Government, the speedy and vigor- 
ous Prosecution of such as have rendred themselves obnoxious, ac- 
cording to the Direction given in the Laws of God, and the wholesome 
Statutes of the English Nation, for the Detection of Witchcrafts. 





APPENDIX C 


LIST OF BOOKS REFERRED TO 


Note. — I have not given complete titles in all cases but have tried 
to give sufficient data for identification. The titles marked with an 
asterisk (*) are those of books or collections containing articles by 
several authors. I have not listed these articles under the names of 
the individual authors except in cases where the article seemed of 
special importance or was very often referred to. 


Acts and Resolves. Acts and Resolves, public and private, of the province of 
Massachusetts Bay. Boston, 1869-. 

Acts of the Privy Council of England, Colonial Series. London, 1908-. 

Adams, B., The Emancipation of Massachusetts. Boston, 1887. 

Adams, J. T., The Founding of New England. Boston, 1921. 

American Antiquarian Society, Proceedings of.* Worcester, various dates. 

Transactions of.* Worcester, various dates. 

American Historical Association, Papers of.* N. Y., 1886-. 

American Society of Church History, Papers of.* N. Y., 1888-. 

Andrews, C. M., Colonial Self-Government. N.Y. (1904). 

The Fathers of New England. New Haven, 1919. 

Andros Tracts, The. See Whitmore, W. H. 

Autobiography. The manuscript autobiography of Increase Mather, owned 
by the American Antiquarian Society. 

Backus, I., 4 Church History of New-England. Providence, 1784. 

Bardsley, C. W., 4 Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames. London,tg01. 

Barrows, S. J., and Trask, W.B. Records of the First Church at Dorchester in 
New England 1636-1734. Boston, 1891. 

Bates, K. L., American Literature. N. Y., 1898. 

Baxter, R., The Glorious Kingdom of Christ. London, 1691. 

Letter to Increase Mather (manuscript) owned by Dr. Williams’s 
Library, London. 

Baylies, F., Historical Memoir of New Plymouth. Boston, 1866. 

Bay Psalm Book, The. Facsimile reprint, with introd. by W. Eames. N. Y., 
1903. 

Beamont, W., Winwick: Its History and Antiquities, 2d ed. Warrington, n. d. 

Belknap, J., The History of New-Hampshire. Phila., 1784. 

Benton, J. H., The Story of the Old Boston Town House 1658-17117. Boston, 
1908. 

cee Records Commission, Fourth Report 1880 (Dorchester Town Rec- 
ords). Boston, 1880. 

Bowman, J. C., The Hated Puritan, in the Weekly Review (N. Y.), v, Io. 

Boyle, R., The Works of. London, 1772. 











408 APPENDICES 


Brinley Catalogue. Catalogue of the American Library of the late Mr. 
George Brinley of Hartford, Conn. Hartford, 1878-97. 

British Fournal, The, for October 19, 1723. 

Brook, B., The Lives of the Puritans. London, 1813. 

Browne, T., Pseudodoxia Epidemica, 2d ed. London, 1650. 

Burnet, G., History of His Own Time. London, 1724. 

( ), 4 Supplement to Burnet’s History of My Own Time, ed. by H. C. 
Foxcroft. Oxford, 1902. 

Burr, G. L., Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases 1648-1706. N. Y., 1914. 

New England’s Place in the History of W. itchcraft, in American 
Antiquarian Society Proceedings, xxi, 18¢ff. 

C., G. E., Complete Baronetage. Exeter, 1900. | 

Calamy, E., Continuation of the Account of the Ejected Ministers. London, 1727. 

Life of Fohn Howe, prefixed to The Works of John Howe. London, 

1724. 

Memoirs of the life of the late Reverend Increase Mather. See Mather, 
Samuel (of Witney). 

Calef, R., More Wonders of the Invisible W orld, in S. G. Drake, The W; itchcraft 
Delusion in New England. Roxbury, 1866. 

Cal. State Papers, Am. and W.I.t Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, 
America and West Indies, ed. by Sainsbury and Fortescue. London, 
various dates. 

Cambridge History of American Literature.* N. Y., IgI7—-21. 

Cambridge History of English Literature.* Cambridge (Eng.), 1907-16. 

Chambers, R., The Book of Days. Edinburgh, 1863. 

Channing, E., The History of the United States. N. Y., 1917-. 

Chaplin, J., The Life of Henry Dunster. Boston, Loge 

Charnock, J., Biographia Navalis. London, 1794-98. 

Clarendon, E., The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England. 
Oxford, 1807. 

Clarke, S., The Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons. London, 1683. 

Colman, B., The Prophet's Death, Lamented and I mproved. Boston, 1723. 

A Sermon... Upon the News of the Death of the much Honoured 
Thomas Hollis; Esg. Boston, 1731. 

Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications of.* Boston, 1895-. 

Colonial Society Publications. See item just preceding. 

Congregational Quarterly.* Boston, N. Y., 1859-78. 

Criegern, H., Fohann Amos Comenius Als T heolog. Leipzig, 188. 

Davis, A. M. F., The Early College Buildings at Cambridge, in American Anti- 
quarian Society Proceedings, April, 1890, and separately. Worcester, 
1890. 

Davis, V. D., Some Account of the Ancient Chapel of Toxteth Park, Liverpool 
_ . - and of its Ministers, especially of Richard Mather, the Jirst Minister. 
Liverpool, 1884. 

Dean, J. W., Sketch of the Life of Rev. Michael W igglesworth, in New England 
Historical and Genealogical Register, April, 1863, and separately. 
Albany, 1863. 

















1. References to this work are to volume and number of entry, not to volume 
and page; ¢. g., xiii, ¥% 1701 is vol. 13, entry 1701. 


ae - 


oe, 


APPENDICES 409 


De Burigny, J. L., The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius. 
London, 1754. 

Densham, W., and Ogle, J., The Story of the Congregational Churches of Dorset. 
Bournemouth, 1899. 

Dexter, F. B., Documentary History of Yale University.* ‘New Haven, 1916. 

Estimates of Population in the American Colonies, in American Anti- 

quarian Society Proceedings. October, 1887. 

Memoranda Respecting Edward Whalley and William Goffe, in 
Papers of the New Haven Colony Historical Society, reprinted in F. B. 
Dexter, 4 Selection from the Miscellaneous Historical Papers of Fifty Years, 
6ff. 

——— Selection from the Miscellaneous Historical Papers of Fifty Years. 
New Haven, 1918. 

Sketch of the Life and Writings of Fohn Davenport, in F. B. Dexter, 
Selection, etc. 

Dexter, H. M., The Congregationalism of the Last Three Hundred Years, etc. 
N. Y., 1880. 

Two Hundred Years Ago in New England, in Congregational Quar- 
terly, iv, 268. 

Dictionary of National Biography, The. London, 1908-09. 

Dixon, W. M., Trinity College, Dublin. London, 1902, 

DNB. See Dictionary of National Biography, The. 

Dorchester Town Records. See Boston Records Commission. 

Doyle, J. A., The English in America. Virginia, Maryland and the Carolinas. 
London, 1882. 

The Puritan Colonies (vols. ii and iti of his The English in America). 
London, 1887. 

Drake, S. A., Old Landmarks and Historical Personages of Boston. Boston, 
gol. 

Drake, S. G., The Early History of New England. Boston, 1864. 

The History of King Philip’s War. Boston, 1862. 

The Pedigree of the Family of Mather, in Mather, C., Magnalia, 

reprint of Hartford, 1853. 

The Witchcraft Delusion in New England. Roxbury, 1866, 

Duncan, J., The History of Guernsey. London, 1841. 

Duniway, C. A., The Development of Freedom of the Press in Massachusetts. 
IN. “Y-.5/1900. 

Dunlap, W., 4 History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the 
United States, ed. by F. W. Bayley and C. E. Goodspeed. Boston, 1918. 

Dunton, J., Letters Written from New England, ed. by W. H. Whitmore. 
Boston, 1867. 

Eames, W.: See Bay Psalm Book, The. 

Farle, A. M., Customs and Fashions in Old New England. N. Y., 1894. 

Edwards, J., 4 Faithful Narrative, etc. Boston, 1737. 

Ellis, G. W., and Morris, J. E., King Philip’s War. N. Y., 1906. 

Evelyn, J., Diary of. Various editions. 

Force, P., Tracts and Other Papers . . . of the Colonies in North America.* 
Washington, 1836-46. 


























410 APPENDICES 


Ford, J. W., Some Correspondence between the Governors and Treasurers of the 
New England Company .. . and the Commissioners of the United Colonies 
in America.* London, 1897. 

Ford, W. C., The Boston Book Market, 1679-1700. Boston, 1917. 

Fosbrooke, T. D., 4” Original History of the City of Gloucester. London, 1819. 

Fraser, W., The Suthzerland Book. Edinburgh, 1892. 

Gill, O., et al., Some Few Remarks upon a Scandalous Book .. . written by 
one Robert Calef, etc. Boston, 1701. 

Gospel Order Revived . . . By sundry Ministers of the Gospel in New-England. 
CIN EY Seon, 

Green, S. A., Ten Fac-simile Reproductions ... various subjects. Boston, 
1903. 

Greene, E. B., Provincial America 1690-1740. N. Y. (1905). 

Gribble, J. B., Memorials of Barnstaple. Barnstaple, 1830. 

Hale, J., 4 Modest Enquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft. Boston, 1702. 

Hammond, L., Fournal of. See Mather, I., Diary. 

Hanus, P. H., Educational Aims and Educational Values. N. Y., 1899. 

Harrison, H., Surnames of the United Kingdom. London, 1912-18. 

Harvard College Records. See Harv. Rec. 

Harvard University. Quinquennial Catalogue of Officers and Graduates. 
Cambridge, 1920. 

Harv. Rec. Harvard College Records, Parts 1 and 2. Corporation Records, 
1636-1750, to be published as Colonial Society of Massachusetts Publica- 
tions, vols. xv and xvi. 

Hawthorne, N., The Works of. Cambridge, 1883. 

Hazard, E., Historical Collections consisting of State Papers.* Phila., 1792-94. 

Hewlett, J. P., Edition of The Works of John Howe. London, 1848. 

Hill, H. A., History of the Old South Church. Boston, 1890. 

Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, Transactions of. Liverpool, 
1849-. 

History of Dorchester. See next item. 

History of the Town of Dorchester in Massachusetts, by a Committee of the 
Dorchester Antiquarian and Historical Society. Boston, 1859. 

Howe, J., The Works of. London, 1724. 

, ed. by J. P. Hewlett. London, 1848. 

Hutchins, J., The History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset, 3d. ed. 
Westminster, 1861-70. 

Hutchinson, F., 4” Historical Essay concerning Witchcraft, 2d. ed. London, 
1720. 

Hutchinson, T., 4 Collection of Original Papers, reprinted as Hutchinson 
Papers.* Albany, 1865. 

The History of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, vols.iand 11. London, 
1765-68. 

( ), The Witchcraft Delusion of 1692, ed. by W. F. Poole. Boston, 
1870. 

Jameson, J. F., Zhe History of Historical Writing in America. Boston, 1891. 

Johnson, E., 4 History of New England. London, 1654. Reprinted as 
‘Fohnson’s Wonder-W orking Providence, ed. by J. F. Jameson. N. Y., 1910. 











a a 


APPENDICES 411 


Josselyn, J., dn Account of Two Voyages to New England, reprinted by 
W. Veazie. Boston, 186s. 

Keith, G., The Presbyterian and Independent Visible Churches. London, 1691. 

Kimball, E., The Public Life of Foseph Dudley. N. Y., IgII. 

Kittredge, G. L., Cotton Mather’s Election into the Royal Society, in Colonial 
Society of Massachusetts Publications, vol. xiv, and separately. 
Cambridge, 1912. 

Cotton Mather’s Scientific Communications to the Royal Society, in 
American Antiquarian Society Proceedings, xxvi, 18ff. 

——— Introduction to Mather, I., Several Reasons, etc., reprinted. Cleveland, 
1921. 

Notes on Witchcraft, in American Antiquarian Society Proceedings, 
XVill, 148ff. 

Lechford, T., Plain Dealing: or, Newes from New-England. London, 1642; 
reprinted, Boston, 1867. 

Lectures on Massachusetts History. Lectures delivered in a Course before the 
Lowell Institute in Boston, by Members of the Massachusetts Historical 
Society, on Subjects relating to the Early History of Massachusetts. Boston, 
1869. 

LeRoy, P., Notebook of, ed. by G. E. Lee, in Publications of Guernsey Histori- 
cal and Antiquarian Society. Guernsey, 1893. 

Leusden, J., Liber Psalmorum. London, 1688. 

Lodge, H. C., 4 Short History of the English Colonies in America. N.Y.(1881). 

Long Island Historical Society Memoirs,* vol. i, Brooklyn, 1867. 

Lothrop, S. K., 4 History of the Church in Brattle Street, Boston. Boston, 1851. 

Love, W. D., The Fast and Thanksgiving Days of New England. Boston, 1895. 

Lowndes, W. T., The Bibliographer’s Manual of English Literature, ed. by 
H. G. Bohn. London, 1890. 

Luttrell, N., 4 Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs from September, 1678, 
to April, 1714. Oxford, 1857. 

Lyon, I. W., The Colonial Furniture of New England. Boston, 1891. 

Macaulay, T. B., History of England. Various editions. 

McCalmont, R. E., Memoirs of the Binghams. London, 1915. 

MacCulloch, E., Guernsey Folk Lore, ed. by E. F. Carey. London, 1903. 

MacDonald, E., Old Copp’s Hill and Burial Ground with Historical Sketches, 
1gth ed. Boston, 1go0. 

Mahafty, J. P., 4 Epoch in Irish History: Trinity College, Dublin, 2d ed. 
London, 1906. 

Maitland, W. H., History of Magherafelt. Cookstown (Ireland), 1916. 

Manifesto Church, The. Records of the Church in Brattle Square, Boston . 
1699-1872. Boston, 1902. 

Manning, O., and Bray, W., The History and Antiquities of . . . County of 
Surrey. London, 1802. 

Marvin, A. P., The Life and Times of Cotton Mather. Boston (1892). 

Massachusetts Historical Society. See MHS. 

Mass. Rec. Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay 
in New England, ed. by N. B. Shurtleff. Boston, 1853-54. 

Mather, C., 4 Collection of Some of the Many Offensive Matters, etc. Boston, 
1701. 








412 APPENDICES 


Mather, C. (Continued), A Faithful Man Described. Boston, 1705. 

Magnalia Christi Americana: or, the Ecclesiastical History of New- 

England. London, 1702. 

Parentator. Memoirs of Remarkables in the Life and Death of the Ever- 

Memorable Dr. Increase Mather. Boston, 1724. 

Thirty Important Cases. Boston, 1699. 

The Wonders of the Invisible World, reprinted. London, 1862. 

Mather, H. E., Lineage of Rev. Richard Mather. Uartford, 1890. 

» Mather, I., Diary, March, 1675-December, 1676, with the Yournal of Capt. 

Hammond, ed. by S. A. Green. Cambridge, 1900. 

The Life and Death of . . . Mr. Richard Mather, reprinted in Col- 

lections of Dorchester Antiquarian and Historical Society, No. 3. Boston, 

1850. 

MS. Diaries, various dates, in the possession of the American Anti- 

quarian Society. 

A Sermon Concerning Obedience &8 Resignation to the Will of God. 
Boston, 1714. 

Mather, R., Fournal of, Collections of Dorchester Antiquarian and Historical 
Society, No. 3. Boston, 1850. 

[Mather, Samuel (of Witney)], Memoirs of the Life of the Late Reverend In- 
crease Mather, D.D. London, 1725. 
(This book has a preface by Edmund Calamy, and he is often given as 
the author of the whole work.) 

Memorial History of Boston, The,* ed. by J. Winsor. Boston, 1880-81. 

MHS Coll.* Massachusetts Historical Society Collections. Various dates. 

MHS Proc.* Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings. Various dates. 

Morton, N., New Englana’s Memorial, ed. by John Davis. Boston, 1826. 

Mullinger, J. B., Cambridge Characteristics in the Seventeenth Century. London, 
1867. 

Mumby, F. A., The Romance of Book Selling. Boston, 1911. 

Murdock, K. B., The Portraits of Increase Mather. Cleveland, 1924. 

Murray, M. A., The Witch-Cult in Western Europe. Oxford, 1921. 

Murray, R. H., Dublin University and the New World. London, 1921. 

NED. See New English Dictionary. 

New Englander, The.* New Haven, 1843-. 

New England Historical and Genealogical Register.* Boston, 1847-. 

New England’s First Fruits. London, 1643; reprinted by J. Sabin. N. Y., 
1865. 

New English Dictionary. 4 New English Dictionary on Historical Principles. 
Oxford, 1888-. 

New Hampshire Historical Society Collections.* Concord, 1824-. 

Nonconformist’s Memorial, The. ...ed. by S. Palmer, 2d ed. London, 1802. 

Notestein, W., 4 History of Witchcraft in England from 1588 to 1718. Wash- 
ington, IgII. 

Nutting, W., Furniture of the Pilgrim Century. Boston, 1921. 

Observator, The. London, 1681-. 

Oldmixon, J., The British Empire in America. London, 1708. 

Orme, W., Memoirs of the Life, Writings and Religious Connexions of John 
Owen, D. D. London, 1820. 























APPENDICES) 5° 413 


Oviatt, E., The Beginnings of Yale. New Haven, 1916. 

Palfrey, J. G., History of New England. Boston, 1858—go. 

Palmer, S. See Nonconformist’s Memorial. 

Parentator. See Mather, C., Parentator. 

Peabody, W. B. O., Life of Cotton Mather, in J. Sparks, The Library of Ameri- 
can Biography, vi, 163ff. 

Pepys, S., Diary. Various editions. 

Philosophical Transactions, The, of the Royal Society.* WLondon, various dates. 

Picton, J. A., Selections from the Municipal Archives and Records {of Liver- 
pool]. Liverpool, 1883. 

Pike, J: S., Tie New Puritan. NY., 1879. 

Polwhele, R., History of Devonshire. Exeter, 1797. 

Pond, E., The Lives of Increase Mather and Sir William Phipps. Boston, 1870. 

Pool, D. de S., Hebrew Learning among the Puritans of New England prior to 
7700, in Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, No. 20, 
Igil. 

Poole, W. F. See Hutchinson, T. 

Cotton Mather and Salem Witchcraft. Boston, 1869. 
( ) Cotton Mather &§ Witchcraft. ‘Two notices of Mr. Upham His 

| Reply. Boston, 1870. 

Porter, E. G., Rambles in Old Boston. Boston, 1887. 

Potter, A. C., Catalogue of Fohn Harvara’s Library. Cambridge, 1919. 

Prideaux, M., dn Easy and Compendious Introduction for Reading All Sorts 
of Histories, 4th ed. Oxford, 1664. 

Quincy, J., The History of Harvard University. Cambridge, 1840. 

Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England, ed. by N. B. Shurtleff. 
Boston, 1856. 

Records of the Governor, etc. See Mass. Rec. 

Redgrove, H.S., and I. M. L., Foseph Glanvill and Psychical Research in the 
Seventeenth Century. London, 1921. 

Religious History of New England, The.* Cambridge, 1917. 

Robbins, C., History of the Second Church . . . in Boston. Boston, 1852. 

The Regicides sheltered in New England, in Lectures on Massachusetts 
History, q. v. 

Roden, R. F., The Cambridge Press. N. Y., 1905. 

Savage, E. A., Old English Libraries. London, 1911. 

Savage, J., 4 Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England. 
Boston, 1860-62. 
Second Church in Boston, The. Commemorative Service Held on the Completion 
of Two Hundred and Fifty Years since its Foundation.* Boston, 1900. 
Second Church: Manuscript volume owned by, containing a copy of part of 
the original records. 

Seymour, St. J. D., Te Puritans in Ireland 1647-1661. Oxford, 1921. 

Shelley, H. C., Fohn Harvard and His Times. Boston, 1913. 

Sheppard, E., The Old Royal Palace of Whitehall. \London, 1902. 

Sherman, S. P., The Genius of America. N. Y., 1923. 

Shillaber, W. G., Facsimile Reprint of The Present State of the New-English 
Affairs. Boston, 1902. 

Shurtleff, N. B. See Mass. Rec. and Records of the Colony, etc. 











414 APPENDICES 


Shurtleff, N. B., (Continued), Topographical and Historical Description of 
Boston, 3d ed. Boston, 1890. 

Sibley, J. L., Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University. 
Cambridge, 1873-85. 

Sparks, J., The Library of American Biography.* Boston, 1834-38. 

Spingarn, J. E., Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century.* Oxford, 1908-09. 

Sprague, W. B., Annals of the American Pulpit. N. Y., 18 57-69. 

Stedman, E. C., and Hutchinson, E. M., 4 Library of American Literature.* 
N. Y., 1888-—go. 

Straus, O. S., Roger Williams. N. Y., 1894. 

Stubbs, J. W., The History of the University of Dublin. Dublin, 1889. 

Taylor, H. O., The Mediaeval Mind. N. Y., 1919. 

Thought and Expression in the Sixteenth Century. N. Y., 1920. 

Thomas, I., The History of Printing in America, 2d ed. Albany, 1874. 

Thomson, J. A. (ed.), The Outline of Science.* London (1921-). 

Thoresby, R., Diary of. London, 1830. 

Thwing, A. H., Card Index of land-owners in Boston, in the Library of the 
Massachusetts Historical Society. 3 

The Crooked and Narrow Streets of the Town of Boston. Boston, 1920. 

Toppan, R. N., Edward Randolph.* Boston, 1898-1909. 

Traill, H. D., and Mann, J.S., Social England.* Illustrated edition. London 
1902-04. 

Trent, W. P., 4 History of American Literature. N. Y., 1903. 

and Wells, B. W., Colonial Prose and Poetry.* N. Y. (1903). 

Tupper, F. B., The Chronicles of Castle Cornet, Guernsey. Guernsey, 1851. 

History of Guernsey. Guernsey, 1876. 

Turell, E., The Life and Character of . . . Benjamin Colman. Boston, 1749. 

Turner, W., 4 Compleat History of the Most Remarkable Providences. London, 
1697. 

Tuttle, C. W., Capt. Francis Champernowne. The Dutch Conquest of Acadie 
and other Historical Papers, ed. by A. H. Hoyt. Boston, 1889. 

Tuttle, J. H., The Libraries of the Mathers, in American Antiquarian Society | 
Proceedings, xx, 260ff. 

Tyler, M. C., 4 History of American Literature, 1607-1765. Students’ edition. 
INGOY (89S): 

Upham, C. W., Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather, in Historical Magazine 
for September, 1869, and separately. Morrisania, 1869. 

Salem Witchcraft, with an Account of Salem Village and a History of 
Opinions on Witchcraft and Kindred Subjects. Boston, 1867. 

Urwick, W., The Early History of Trinity College, Dublin. Dublin, 1892. 

Veazie, W. See Josselyn, J. 

W., J., The Life... of... Dr.... Winter. London, 1671. 

Waddington, C., Ramus, Sa Vie, Ses Ecrits, et ses Opinions. Paris, 1855. 

Walker, G. L., Thomas Hooker. N.Y. (1 891). 

Walker, W., Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism.* N. Y., 1893. 

A Flistory of the Congregational Churches in the United States. N. Y., 

1894. 

The Services of the Mathers in New England Religious Development, 

in Papers of the American Society of Church History, v, 6ff. 























APPENDICES ats 





Ten New England Leaders. Boston, 1901. 

Ward, A. W., 4 History of English Dramatic Literature. London, 1875. 

Ward, E. F., Christopher Monck, Duke of Albermarle. London, 1915. 

Ward, N., The Simple Cobbler of Agawam, reprinted, Boston, 1843. 

Ware, H., Two Discourses containing the History of the Old North and New 
Brick Churches. Boston, 1821. 

Waters, T. F., Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Ipswich, 1905. 

Wendell, B., Cotton Mather, the Puritan Priest. N.Y. (1891). 

Stelligeri and other Essays. N. Y., 1893. 

Westcote, T., 4 View of Devonshire in 1630. Exeter, 1845. 

White, A. D., 4 History of the Doctrine of Comets, in Papers of the American 
Historical Association, vol. 2, no. 2. 

A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom. 
N. Y., 1919. 

Whiting, J., Truth and Innocency Defended. London, 1702. 

Whitmore, W. H. (ed.), The Andros Tracts.* Boston, 1868-74. 

Wilson, W., The History and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches and Meeting 
Houses in London, etc. London, 1808-14. 

Winsor, J., The Literature of Witchcraft in New England, in American Anti- 
quarian Society Proceedings, x, 351ff. 

Winthrop, J., The History of New England from 1630 to 1649, ed. by James 
Savage. Boston, 1853. 

Winthrop, R. C., Life and Letters of Fohn Winthrop. Boston, 1864-67. 

Wood, Anthony, The Life and Times of, ed. by A. Clark. Oxford, 1891-1900. 

Wood, W., New Englands Prospect, reprinted, Boston, 1897. 

Worth, R. N., 4 History of Devonshire. London, 1886. 

Wright, C. H. C., History of French Literature. N. Y., 1912. 

Wright, T. G., Literary Culture in Early New England. New Haven, 1920. 








APPENDIX D 


CHECK LIST OF MATHER’S WRITINGS 


Norte. — This list is in two parts. The first contains those books 
published before 1702, and the second lists the later works. In 
neither list are full titles given, but simply a brief designation suffi- 
cient to make possible the identification of the book. This bibliog- 
raphy is based on data furnished me by Mr. T. J. Holmes and 
Dr. G. P. Winship, who are now editing a complete Mather bibliog- 
raphy, to be published by Mr. W. G. Mather, of Cleveland. In a 
few cases I have omitted titles usually ascribed to Mather, when 
the evidence seemed against his authorship; but I have done this 
only when Mr. Holmes and- Dr. Winship have agreed with my 
conclusions. 

Most of the books comprised in Part I of my list are mentioned in 
the text, and after each title I give a page reference to the passage 
in which it is discussed. The books listed in Part II are not discussed 
in the text. 

PART I 


BIBLIOGRAPHY TO 1702 


Angelographia.“! Boston, 1696ehnai i. a Je ae 326/997 
Answer of several ministers . .. deceased wife’s sister. Boston, 1695, 1711 322 
Answer to the question whether are not brethren. — (In “A Vindica- 
tion of the Divine Authority.” See below.) 
Arrow against. .. dancing.) Boston) 1684,:1686 4.) 163 
Blessed'Hope), Boston, 1701. 22) A 324 
Brief account concerning ... agents of New England. London, 1691 274, Dis 
Brief discourse concerning Common Prayer worship. (Boston, 1686), 


London, '1689.' ny 4 2500) eae ee lenient eer 27278 

» Brief history of the war with the Indians. Boston, 1676, London, 1676, 
Boston, 1862 (with title “History of King Philip’s War”). . . . r10ff. 
Brief relation of the state of New England. London, 1689 . . . . 224, ob 


The Same. In Force’s Tracts. 
The Same. In Andros Tracts. 
The Same (earlier draft). MHS Coll., Series 3, i, 93ff. 











Brieff von dem glucklichen fortgang. Halle, 1696. ........ 27INn, 
Call:trom Heaven.’ Boston, 1670)/£685 09) ea 135, 136 
Case of Conscience concerning eating of blood. Boston, 1697... . . 323 


Cases of conscience concerning evil spirits. Boston, 1693, London, 1693, 


London;;1 862 ity Pay ag ane eh a cee ee 299ff., 309 


APPENDICES 417 


David serving his generation. Boston, 1698. ....... 323, 329, 330 
Day omtroupleis nears, Cambridge 1674! 0 o-.. 60!) duck). IOI, 102 
De successu evangelij. London, 1688, Utrecht, 1699... .  ~ . 271, opp 
pee sends. Aristerdam 1692) tals Vests ocala ce ale 140 
Discourse concerning the danger of apostasy. Printed with Call from 
Meee MEM OSLONLOZO) LORS Mw) Mein seen ais eg Ue chy 133 ff. 
Discourse concerning baptisme. Cambridge, 1675... ......., 138 


Discourse concerning the uncertainty of the times of men. Boston, T6G7 323 
Disputation concerning church members and their children. London, 


ELVES 1c UO Seek MURANO are Re LA SUEY Rate 80, n. 65 
Disquisition concerning angelical apparitions. Boston, 1696. (Also in 

BURMA RI Ae) Ge 9) NY al meee icer itn mie iiy LRG 326, n. 47 
Divine right of infant-baptisme. Boston, 1680. ........ 138, 139 
Doctrine of divine providence. Boston, 1684 ......... 166, 167 


Early history of New England. Albany, 1864. 

(This is a reprint of Relation of the Troubles, for which see below.) 
Earnest exhortation to the inhabitants of New England. Boston, 1676 1 39 
Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences. Boston, 1684, 

London, 1684, 1687, London, 1856 (with title “Remarkable Provi- 

dences’’), London, 1890 (same as preceding)... .. . 167ff., 306fF. 
Faithful advice from several ministers . . . imposters. Boston (1699) . 323 
First principles of New England ... baptisme. Cambridge, 1675 . . 98, 99 
TES yerta SING Ds me DL OSTOI LOGO 2% Lk aloncovn lily i Rs cee) peel aalt 325, 326 
Further account of the tryals of . . . witches. London, 1693, 1862 299, n. 36 

(Probably not by Increase Mather.) 


Further vindication of New-England. London, n. d. (1689?) . . . 223, 224 
Great blessings of primitive counsellors. Boston, 1693, and in Andros 
er Se A a AORN) Puan Ce Naty TA RMN hat) MC na R313 32 
(are ace sestaiersexnonted Ma bOstonTOsG (i ce ley 164 
Heaven’s Alarm. Boston, 1681, 1682; also in Kometographia, and Lon- 
SETS SON OUR) ELST bees ol gan ek ae be 143, 144 
Historical discourse concerning prayer. Boston, 1677... . . . 139, 140 





The Same. In Relation of the Troubles, see below. 
History of King Philip’s War. See Brief History, above. 
Illustrious Providences. See Essay for the recording. 


Judgment of several eminent divines. Boston,1693 ........ 322 
Mometontapiiayan boston, 1693, London, 181100 ii olny A 14.$ff. 
Latter sign. (Boston, 1682) in 2d ed. of Heaven’s Alarm ...... 144 


Letter concerning the success of the Gospel among the Indians. (Transla- 
tion of De Successu, g. v.) 

Letter from some aged nonconforming ministers. Boston, 1712 (4th ed.). 
Contains preface by I. M. and seems to have been published by him 
-Life and death of Richard Mather. Cambridge,1670........ 97 

The Same. Boston, 1850, 1874. 

Masukkenukeeg (an Indian translation of some of Mather’s sermons). 
Pas Caries OOO Mim aL A tmerma sieve rd) cyt aking: 0 Bee ed, a 320, n. 12 

Pive cesweciChtistin, (BOSton ) TOSO is Ay hi peuue en anlar es 164, 165 





1. The title of this book is in Greek letters. I give the usual transliteration. 


418 APPENDICES 


Mystery of Israel’s salvation. (London) 1669 .......... o4ff. 
Narrative of the miseries of New England. (London, 1688), 1689, 

Boston, 1775,1n Andros Tracts and Old South Leaflets, Annual Series, 

VOL: 11 y MOB hoes ely Mie meh wl ta BE ee he eg a an 212ff. 
Necessity of reformation.” Boston; 1679. 3) 0/2". 2) ISI 
The Same. In Cotton Mather: Results of Three Synods. 
Boston, 1725. 





New England vindicated. (London, 1688) and Andros Tracts . . . . 220ff. 

Néws* from) New England. watai tog.) ee ny ee ae 239294 
(Probably not by Mather.) 

Order of the Gospel.) ‘Boston, London, |1700 1.392. 2).0) pe 360ff. 


Practical truths tending to promote the power of godliness. Boston, 
1s, PAR PMN rnel MC RLM et et 
Pray for the rising generation. Boston, 1678, 1679. (Also with Call 





from Heaven.) +... 6.0 puke MOR ae eC ee 133 
Present state of New English affairs. Boston, 1689, 1902, and in New 
Hampshire Historical Soc. Coll., 1, 252,and in Andros Tracts. . . . 228 
Reasons for the confirmation of the charter . . . Massachusetts. N. p., 
n. ds) 1689;-and "in indros Tracts. 8. | ke aCe 
Reasons for the confirmation of the charters... New England. N.p., 
Ne, Gs, STO8qi Py ANE RINT US ee Ne ee ee 234, 235 
Relation of the ‘troubles:’Bostony1677) 2) 2) Sa 128 ff. 
The Same (reprinted as Early History of New England). Albany, 
T8640 WE ee eA a EN ke RS 128 ff, 
Remarkable Providences. See Essay for the recording of . .. 
Renewal of covenant.) Bostony 1677 ©) 0100. 132 
Returning unto God.) Boston)’ 1680178.) 272 1. 136 
Sermon occasioned by the execution of ... Boston, 1686, 1687 . . 165, 166 





The Same. (In the Wonders of Free Grace.) London, 1691 165, 166 

Sermon preached at the lecture in Boston. Second edition of The 
Wicked Man’s Portion. Boston, 1685. See below. 

Sermon wherein is shewed ... Church .. . subject of . . . persecution. 


Boston, 1682) fa svi b i. anten ia Wie) IR Aen 136, 137 
Solemn advice to young men. Boston, 1695, 1709? 5.) a 27 
Some important truths about conversion. London, 1674, Boston, 

72) CaP ERE aU AN hire Mees Mec e CM Er 100, IOI 
Surest way to the greatest honour. Boston, 1699........ 3355 336 
Testimony against ... prophane and superstitious customs. London, 

1687;/ Boston} 1683 iy ew ei ie) Ok ae tae ee Se 163, 164 
Times of men are in the hands of God. Boston, 1675 ......... 131 
Two plain and practical discourses. London, Boston, 1699 .... . 326 
Vindication of New England. “N, p.jn.d., 1688... «1.5 S99 ee 22¢ff, 

(Probably not by Increase Mather. See text.) 
Vindication of the divine authority of ruling elders. Boston, 1700 . . . 324 


The Same. In J. White: New England’s Lamentations 

Boston, 1734. 
Wicked: man’s portion." Boston, 1675, 1485) )s)\ 2) tests eee IZ; sae 
Wo to drunkards, Cambridge, 1673, Boston, 1712 1... . . .14 103, 104 





APPENDICES 419 


Preraces, Etc., 1n Works sy OrHER AUTHORS 


muswenmroascorve iveith’s libel: # Boston, 16g4, 1 Vib wed $104 pc onan 8 
montenson Oltaith ofthe synod ofl OBO tess at casts Khe Leyden 8 
Davenport, J.: Another essay for the investigation of the truth. Cam- 

eRe OSM Meer ges. or oT Ar cae NS Wet ce NBG bn i Ng oe hc tea) Sif, 
Fitch, J.: First Principles of the doctrine of Christ. Boston, 1679 . . . 140 
Flavel, John: A... Discourse of... Mental Errors, 1691... . . . 274 n. 
Travelon) Ouniernisland.s: Duty) (168G) a. <l ais le ie hoe a Re oes Digs: 
Flavel, John: Exposition of the Assemblies Catechism, 1692, Salisbury, 

age VNTR LLY 18.00 Lawl Oteade Meds, ch rote opK ete L! iehys S1uy iy Seas 274 


; 
Lawson, D.: The Duty... of a religious householder ... Boston, 1693. 
Mather, C.: Collection of some... offensive matters. Boston, 1701 369, 370 














aa tcClesiactega mDastony LOG tines. mars rol Ado a ns ih Oe a hie 3276, 
Pveriacting. Grospelme bastonst yO ee), We es) ey awa) ete B24 
PaAnnestinereniOs DOs Lotes 100 Specie dia tsa lag crue 324, 325 
dairy important cacesis boston sl 60914. 54.4) iis sues a, evar 8 


Mather, E.: Serious Exhortation. Cambridge, 1671, Boston, 1678 98, 140 
Mather, S.: Testimony from the Scripture. Cambridge, 1670, Boston, 


Bar eae Nee Dik a Nis devs ninte gene < wets le | 0 fe) vy BNE SMWIL EE UNE i 97, 98 
Preteotw cr stopirit of mann bostonerOg} eu wut inc nee Wel ae 320 
Makes en) .) ocasonable discourse, | Cambridge, 168262 9 ps sei 
Quick, J.: Young Man’s Claim. Boston, 1700 (doubtful) ...... 323 


S., J. [Sault, Richard]: The Second Spira... fearful example of an 
Atheist . .. Boston, 1693 

















Torrey, S.: Exhortation to reformation. Cambridge, 1674 ..... 103 
Plea for the life of dying religion. Boston, 1683 ....... 141 

Willard, S.: Brief discourse concerning . .. laying the hand on the Bible 
in swearing. London, 1689, and Andros Tracts ....... WIR AOVA 
Covenant-keeping, the way to blessedness. Boston, 1682 . . . 141 
Doctrine of the covenant of redemption. Boston (1693) . . . 322 
Nersuton UltrarGrepidam: | Bostony;1683)o ca) bn ht 141ff, 
ota molethe times + BOSCON M1 FOO Neen oe i NAT Aue aaa Ul ee 330 

PART II 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 1702-1723 


Nore. — I give here brief titles of such works as are noted by the 
editors of the forthcoming Mather bibliography in their preliminary 
check-list. This list does not pretend to be complete, nor can it be 
made so until the bibliography upon which Mr. Holmes and Mr. 
Winship are engaged is finished. 

An account of the reasons, etc. (Contains letters by Increase and Cotton 

Mather, though it seems to be edited by A. Sears and others.) 1720. 

Advice to the children of godly ancestors. Boston, 1721. 


Awakening soul-saving truths. Boston, 1720. 
Awakening truths tending to conversion. Boston, 1710. 


4.20 APPENDICES 


Believers gain by death. Boston, 1713. 

Burnings bewailed. Boston, 1711, 1712. 

Call to the tempted ... suicides. Boston, 1723. 

Charge at the ordination of T. Prince. Boston, 1718. 

Discourse concerning earthquakes. Boston, 1706. 

Discourse concerning ... prayer. Boston, 1710. 

Discourse concerning the death... of John... and... Abigail Foster. 
Boston, 1711. 


Discourse concerning the existence... of God. [Boston, 1716.] 

Discourse concerning the grace of courage. Boston, 1710. 

Discourse concerning the maintenance of... Boston, 1706, London, 1709. 

Discourse on sacramental occasions (probably not a genuine title). Bostand 
I7II. 


Discourse proving that the Christian religion... Boston, 1702. 
Disquisition concerning ecclesiasticall councils. Boston, 1716. 
. (Reprinted in Congregational Quarterly, Vol. 12). Boston, 1702. 
— The Same. Printed separately. Boston, 1870. 
Disquisition concerning the... souls of men. Boston, 1707, London, 1707. 
Dissertation concerning . . . conversion of the Jewish Nation. London, 1709, 
Boston, 1709. 





Dissertation wherein the strange doctrine . . Boston, 1708, Edinburgh, 1710, 


eye. 

Doctrine of singular obedience. Boston, 1707. 
Duty of Parents. Boston, 1703, Boston, 1719. 
Dying legacy of a minister. Boston, 1722. 
Earnest exhortation to children of New England. Boston, 1711. 
Elijah’s Mantle. Boston, 1722, Boston, 1774. 
Excellency of a publick spirit. Boston, 1702. 
Five sermons on several subjects. Boston, 1719. 
Four Sermons. Boston, 1708. 
Further Testimony against ... New North Church. Boston, 1720. 
Ichabod. Boston, 1702, Boston, 1729. 
Letter about the present state of Christianity ... Indians. Boston, 1705. 
Letter from some aged non-conforming ministers ... 4th ed. Boston, 1712. 
Meditations on death. Boston, 1707. 
Meditations on the glory of the heavenly world. Boston, 1711. 
Meditations on the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. Boston, 1705. 
Meditations on the sanctification of the Lord’s day. Boston, I7iDs 
Now or never. Boston, 1713. 
Original rights of mankind. Boston, 1722. 

(Probably not by Mather.) Cf. Brinley Catalogue, #1012. 


Plain discourse shewing who... enter . . . heaven. Boston, 1713, Boston, 


172 
Plea for the ministers. Boston, 1706. 
Practical truths plainly delivered. Boston, 1718. 
Practical truths tending to promote holiness. Boston, 1704. 
Seasonable meditations ... winter & summer. Boston, 1712. 
Seasonable testimony to good order in churches. Boston, 1720. 
Sermon concerning obedience & resignation. Boston, 1714. 


= fin 


APPENDICES 421 


Sermon shewing that... wonderful revolutions in the world are near at hand. 
Edinburgh, 1710, Edinburgh, 1713. 

Sermon wherein is shewed .. . ministers... need prayers. Boston, 1718. 

Sermon wherein those eight characters . . . Boston, 1718, Boston, 1719, 
Dublin, 1721. 

Several reasons proving ... inoculating ...small pox. Boston, 1721, Boston, 
1726, Cleveland, 1921; in MHS Coll., Series 1, vol. 9, and in 4m. Fournal 
of Public Health, Feb. 1921. 

Several sermons wherein is shewed. Boston, 1715. 

Some further account . . . of the small-pox inoculated. Boston, 1721. 

Some important truths about conversion (new edition). Boston, 1721. 

Some remarks on a late sermon... by George Keith. Boston, 1702. 

Some remarks on a pretended answer. London, Boston [1712]. 

Soul Saving gospel truths. Boston, 1703, 1712, Philadelphia, 1743. 

Two discourses shewing. Boston, 1716. 

Voice of God in stormy winds. Boston, 1704. 

Wo to drunkards, 2d ed. Boston, 1712. 


Preraces, Erc., 1n Works By OTHER AUTHORS 


Belcher, J.: God giveth the increase. Boston, 1722. 

Boyd, W.: Gods way the best way. Boston, 1719. 

Brown, J.: Divine Help. Boston, 1726. 

Capen, J.: Funeral Sermon occasioned by the death of Joseph Green. 
Boston, 1717. 

Danforth, J.: Blackness of sins against light. Boston, 1710. 

Doolittle, T.: Treatise concerning Lord’s supper, 20th ed. Boston, 1708. 

Dummer, J.: Discourse on the Holiness of the Sabbath Day. Boston, 1704, 
1763) 

Flynt, H.: Doctrine of the Last Judgement. Boston, 1714. 

Hillhouse, J.: Sermon... state of saints. Boston, 1721. 

Keith, J.: Bridgewater’s Monitor. Boston, 1717, 1768, 1788. 

Loring, I.: Duty and interest of young persons to remember their creator. 
Boston, 1718. 

Mather, C.: Accomplished singer. Boston, 1721. 

Brethren dwelling together in unity. Boston, 1718. 

Coelestinus. Boston, 1723. 

Course of Sermons on Early Piety. Boston, 1721. 

Faithful Man. Boston, 1705. 

Good evening ... best of dayes. Boston, 1708. 

Hades look’d into. Boston, 1717. 

Love triumphant. Boston, 1722. 

——— Marah spoken to. Boston, 1718, 1721. 

Ratio disciplinae. Boston, 1726. 

Right way to shake off viper, 2d ed. Boston, 1720. 

Serious address to those who . . . frequent the Tavern. Boston, 1726. 

—— Three letters from New England. London, 1721. 

Utilia. Boston, 1716. 

—— Winthropi Justa. London, 1709. 



































422 APPENDICES 


Mitchell, J.: Discourse of the Glory, 2d ed. Boston, 1721. 

Monis, J.: Truth. Boston, 1722. 

Moodey, S.: Vain Youth. Boston, 1707. 

Praise out of the Mouth of Babes. Boston, 1709, 1741. 

Prince, T.: God brings to the desired haven. Boston, 1717. 

Reynolds, T.: Practical religion. Boston, 1713. 

Sewall, J.: Precious treasure. Boston, 1717. 

Symmes, T.: Monitor for delaying sinners. Boston, 1719. 

Stoddard, S.: Guide to Christ. Boston, 1714, 1735, 1742, Edinburgh, 1763, 
Newburyport, 1801, and Northampton, 1816. 

Wadsworth, B.: Death is certain. Boston, 1710. 

Walter, N.: Discourse concerning the wonderfulness of Christ. Boston, 1713. 

Webb, J.: Young man’s duty. Boston, 1718. 

White, J.: Secret prayer inculcated. Boston, 1719. 

Wise, J.: Prayer in affliction. Boston, 1717. 


INDEX 







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INDEX 


Note, — Throughout the Index the initial M. stands for Increase Mather, 


Apams, James T., The Founding of New 
England, quoted or referred to, 57 n., 
Ov in, iit ia wiptvand ns a8 n,, 
BOG Mae 227 Neat 21, 252, 205n,, 
313 n. 

Addington, Isaac, Secretary under new 
charter, 250, 251. 

Addison, Joseph, 375. 

Ady, Thomas, 290. 

Albemarle, Duke of. See Monk. 

Alcott, Job, 250. 

Allen, James, 341, 344 N., 348, 353, 360. 

Alsop, Vincent, 191, 196, 198, 275. 

_Anabaptists, 138, 139. 

Andrews, C. M., Fathers of New England, 
255 n. 

Andros, Sir Edmund, succeeds Dudley as 
President of New England, 158; his ad- 
ministration, 158 ff.; and Harvard Col- 
lege, 178, 179, 180; and the holding of 
Anglican services in Boston churches, 
181; his conduct criticized by M. to 
James II, 195; made governor of all 
British America except Pennsylvania, 
etc., 203; terms of his commission, 203; 
M. works against in England, 203 ff.; 
M.’s charges against, 204, 205, 213, 214; 
and effect of accession of William III on 
his position in Boston, 210; not con- 
firmed in office by William, 215, 216; 
proceedings against in Boston, 217, 218; 
imprisoned, 218; general opinion of his 
attitude toward James and William, 
218, 219 and n., 225; ordered to return 
to England, 228; charges against before 
Committee on Trade, etc., not signed, 
230, and dismissed, 231; becomes Gover- 
nor of Virginia, 231; effect of failure of 
charges against, on M.’s mission, 231; 
pamphlets in defence of, 233, 234; men- 
tioned, 49, 182, 183, 186, 187, 196, 197, 


201i. 22iys2 97 2242240, a kT ed, 
257, 272, 361. 

Anglesey, Countess of, 199, 200. 

Anne, Princess (afterward Queen), 209, 
375+ 

Annesley, Samuel, 275. 

Appleton, Samuel, 250. 

Aristotle, 342, 343. 

Ashton, Oe 

Ashurst, Sir Henry, and the charges 
against Andros, 230, 231; favors ac- 
cepting new charter, 246n., 248, 249; 
mentioned, 212, 214, 226, 229, 243, 244, 
256, 259, 264, 356, 380, 381. 

Ashurst, William, 198, 215. 

Aspinwall, Edward, 11, 13. 

“Assistants,” under new charter, 250, 251, 
oe. 

Astronomy, advance in science of, 144. 





Bacon, Francis, 47, 76. 

Baily, John, 275, 322 n. 

Baptism, MM. and the controversy over, 
T2551 30; 

Barnard, Richard, 294 and n. 

Barry, Elizabeth, 263. 

Bartas, Guillaume de S. du, 42. 

Bastwick, John, 33. 

Bates, William, 275. 

Baxter, Richard, M.’s relations with, 266, 
267; mentioned, 40, 63, 191, 196, 244, 
264, 269, 271, 292, 306 n., 308, 309, 369, 
390: 

Bay Psalm Book, 32, 33, 41. 

Bayle, Pierre, 144. 

Beard, T., and Taylor, T., Dheaire of 
God’s Fudgments, 170. 

Bedford, Earl of. See Russell, William. 

Bekker, Balthazar, 289 and n. 

Bellarmene, Robert, 77. 

Bellasis, John, Lord, 198, 200. 


426 


Bellingham, Richard, 87. 

Bellingham, Samuel, 68. 

Bellomont, Earl of. See Coote. 

Benn, William, 64, 68, 277. 

Bentinck, William (Earl of Portland), 211, 
254. 

Betterton, Thomas, 263. 

Beverley, Thomas, 269. 

Bible, the, and the Puritan belief, 22, 
23, 26 n.; its “truest teaching” for M., 
IOs, 

Bingham, Colonel, appoints M. chaplain 
of garrison at Guernsey, 64; 69. 

Bishop, Bridget, hanged as a witch, 292. 

Blathwayt, Mrs. Mary, 200, 201 and n., 
207. 

Blathwayt, William, letter of M. to, 350, 
351 and n.; mentioned, 200, 201 and 
n., 207. 

Bodin, Jean, 144. 

Books, published in New England, 26; in 
M.’s library, 75-78, 125 ff., 162, 163, 
170, 171, 268 and n., 269 and n., 321, 
322, 

Boston, in 1635, 19, 25 ff.3 in 1661, 71, 72; 
the “great names” of, 79; printing 
press set up in (1674), 106; epidemic in, 
115; great fire in (1676), 115, 116, 124; 
wide range of books available in, 127, 
128; meeting of freemen in, votes 
against submission to Quo Warranto, 
153, 154, but has little practical result, 
155; vogue of M.’s books in, 155; 
churches of, commission M. to bear to 
the king in London thanks for his Dec- 
laration of Indulgence, 182, 185; rising 
against Andros in, ends in his imprison- 
ment, 217,218; William and Mary pro- 
claimed at, 218; extracts from M.’s 
London letters published in, 228; M.’s 
return to (1692), 284-286. 

Boston, First Church, and the Synod of 
1662, 87, 88. 

Boston, Second Church, M. becomes 
Teacher of, 84, 86 ff.; increases in 
membership of, under M., 92 n., 150, 
319; made homeless by fire, 148, 149; 
C. Mather M.’s colleague in, 162; in 
1684-1688, 177; votes to allow M. to 


INDEX 


live in Cambridge, 356; protests man- 
ner of admission to communion, 359. 

Boston, Third Church, 88, 98. 

Boyle, Robert, his learning and achieve- 
ment, 264, 265; M.’s relations with, 
265, 266; mentioned, 86, 169, 170, 175, 
198, 289, 292, 308, 309, 390. 

Bracegirdle, Anne, 263. 

Bradford, William, 21, 250. 

Bradstreet, Anne, Tenth Muse, etc., 42. 

Bradstreet, Simon, Governor of Mass., 
and the royal declaration of 1683, 152; 
elected president of new provincial gov- 
ernment after overthrow of Andros, 
218; mentioned, 79, 118 n., 143 n., 183, 
184, 217, 250, 280, 285, 297, 315, 321 
and n. 

Brahe, Tycho, 144, 147. 

Brattle St. Church, story of, 358 ff.; 
“Manifesto” of, attacked by C. Mather, 
Ch: 

Brattle, Thomas, and the witchcraft 
trials, 296, 297 and n., 298, 300; men- 
tioned, 178, 179, 303, 304, 305, 306, 316, 
344 1-5 3455 355, 358, 359, 360, 366, 367, 
368, 369, 370, 371, 378, 395. 

Brattle, William, 341, 344 n., 355, 358, 
359s 360, 361, 366, 367, 368, 369, 371, 
378, 381. 

Bridgman, John, Bishop of Chester, sus- 
pends R. Mather from ministry, 15, 16. 

Browne, Sir Thomas, 40, 127, 128, 144, 
175, 292, 309. 

Browne, William, 252. 

Buchanan, George, 76. 

Bulkeley, Gershom, 49. 

Bulkeley, Peter, 118 and n., 120. 

Bullivant, Benjamin, 186, 189, 217. 

Bunyan, John, 86, 128, 271. 

Burne-Jones, Sir E., 398. 

Burnet, Gilbert, Bishop, 211 and n., 212, 
236, 264. 

Burr, G. L., New England’s Place in the 
History of Witchcraft, quoted, 290 n., 
307 n. 

Burroughs, convicted as a witch, 298 and 
n., 299. 

Burton, Robert, 33. 

Butler, Henry, 39. 


INDEX 


Butler, James, Earl of Ormonde, 58. 
Butler, Sir Nicholas, 196. 

Butler, Samuel, 128. 

Byby, Simon, 16. 

Byfield, Dr., 378. 

Byles, Matthew, 384. 

Byron, Lord, Manfred, quoted, 100. 


Calamy, Edmund, quoted on M., 398. 

Calef, Robert, his More Wonders of the 
Invisible World, and the witchcraft 
delusion 310+312, 311 n., 313 0.) 373; 
his attacks on the Mathers, 350; men- 
tioned, 175. 

Calvin, John, Institute, 77; 21. 

Cambridge Association of Ministers, M. 
active In, 319; 322, 345. 

Cambridge Platform, the, 38, 41. 

Cambridge Press, publications of, 40, 41. 

Camden, William, 47. 

Care, Henry, 191. 

Carew, Thomas, 40, 59. 

Carey, Abraham, Provost of Guernsey, 
66. 

Carr, Sir Robert, 87. 

Carstairs, William, 212 and n. 

Cartwright, George, 87. 

Castine, Vincent, Baron de, 203. 

Cavendish, William, Earl of Devonshire, 
231, 239, 254. 

Censorship of printing, rigor of, in Eng- 
land and New England, 106. 
Charles I, ecclesiastical policy of, 16; exe- 
cution of, 16; mentioned, 33, 88, 224. 
Charles II, proclaimed, 66, 67; letter of, 
concerning franchise and _ increased 
toleration, and the Navigation Acts, 
120; his “Declaration” of 1683, 152, 
153, and M.’s answer, 153; mentioned, 
59, 79, 84, 88, 222. 

Charlton, Francis, 239 and n., 244. 

Chauncy, Charles, succeeds Dunster as 
President of Harvard, 53; mentioned, 
41, 54, 76, 81, 88, 364, 369. 

Child, Robert, 41. 

Chiswell, Richard, 112, 125, 126, 268. 

Christ, M. on the nature of, 164, 165. 

Christmas celebrations, condemned by 
M., 164. 


427 


Church of England, and the royal power, 
21; severe policy of, causes flight of 
Pilgrims to Holland and then to Ply- 
mouth, 21; attitude toward, of two 
types of Puritans in New England, 21, 
22; in 1657, 59; status of, in New Eng- 
land, under Andros, 158, 159, 160. 

Churchill, John, 209. 

Clarendon, Earl of. See Hyde, Edward. 

Clark, Samuel; Mirrour, etc., and Look- 
ing-Glass for Persecuters, 170; 269. 

Clergy, the, and King Philip’s War, 113, 
114. 

Clinton, Lady, 199. 

Cock-fighting, M. on, 164. 

Cole, Thomas, 198 and n. 

Collins, Nathaniel, 162. 

Colman, Benjamin, called to pulpit of 
Brattle St. Church, 359, 360, 363, 366, 
368, 369; was he the author of Gospel 
Order Revived? 370; quoted, on M., 391, 
392; mentioned, 276, 278 n., 323, 381, 
386, 389, 399, 394- 

Comenius, John A., De Bono Unitatis, 69. 

Comets, ancient doctrine of, 144, 145; 
M.’s book on, 145 ff. 

Committee on Trade and Plantations, 
M.’s petition to, 207, 208; refuses cer- 
tain clauses thereof, 209; M.’s second 
petition to, 209; M.’s third petition to, 
215; its recommendation to the King, 
215; hears M. and others on charges 
against Andros, 230, 231; plan for new 
charter referred to, 232 ff.; consults 
with William concerning new charter, 
239. 

Common Prayer, Book of, denounced by 
Mi 273. 

Communion, controversy over manner of 
admission to, and the Brattle St. 
Church, 358 ff. 

Compton, Henry, Bishop of London, 202, 
214. 

Congregational Church, controversy re- 
garding admission to, 80 ff.; dual mem- 
bership of, 80, 81. 

“Congregational Way,” the, 16. 

Congregationalism, early, in New Eng- 
land, 9. 


428 


Congregationalists and Presbyterians, in 
England, efforts to unite, 281-283. 

Connecticut, M. seeks restoration of char- 
ter of, E5267; 

Cooke, Elisha, and the charges against 
Andros, 230, 231; favors rejection of 
new charter, 246n., 247, 249; not 
chosen by M. for office under new char- 
ter, 252; leader of M.’s adversaries, 
333, 341, 342; his election to Council 
vetoed by Phipps, 333, 334; mentioned, 
49, 229, 244, 259, 260, 337, 339, 348 and 
Ney 3545 371, 3745 379, 389. 

Cooper, Anthony Ashley, Earl of Shaftes- 
bury, 239. 

Coote, Richard, Earl of Bellomont, Gov- 
ernor of Mass., 335, 338, 351 and n., 
353, 354 and n., 355, 356, 372. 

Copernicus, 144. 

Corporation Bill, the, 227, 228. 

Corwin, Jonathan, member of court to 
try witches, 293 n.; 250. 

Cotton, Ann (Lake), widow of John Cot- 
ton 3d, M.’s second wife, 385. 

Cotton, John, M. quoted on, 49; men- 
tioned 16;17/and n.v28ins, 40,141, 72, 
76, 94, 178, 267, 272, 324. 

Cotton, John, Jr., 49, I10n., 114, 203, 
320. 

Cotton, John, 3d, M.’s nephew, 385. 

Cotton, Mrs. John (I), R. Mather’s sec- 
ond wife, 56. 

Cotton, Maria, marries M., 72, 73; 56. 
And see Mather, Maria (Cotton). 

Cowley, Charles, 79. 

Cranfield, ——, 153. 

Crashaw, Richard, 4o. 

Cromwell, Henry, 62. 

Cromwell, Oliver, death of, 64; men- 
tioned, 36, 59, 63, 66, 69, 195. 

Cromwell, Richard, abdicates, 64; 63. 

Culpeper, Thomas, Lord, 196 and n., 
198. 


Danforth, John, 353 and n. 

Danforth, Samuel, 108, 250. 

Danforth, Thomas, elected judge of Su- 
preme Court, 303; mentioned, 252, 2865, 


293, 296, 315, 316. 


INDEX 


Davenport, John, his protest against de- 
cision of Synod of 1662, and M.’s Pref- 
ace thereto, 81 and n., 82, 83; harbors 
regicides, 88, 89; death of, 96, 97; 
mentioned, 76, 87, 94, 95, 125, 128, 324, 
369. 

Davis, Silvanus, 250. 

Declaration of Indulgence, 86. 

Devonshire, Earl of. See Cavendish. 

Digby, Sir Kenelm, 44, 175. 

Dorchester, England, ©. preaches at, 68. 

Dorchester, Mass., new church organized 
at, with R. Mather as Teacher, 30, 31; 
M.’s interest in, 72; represented by M. 
in Synod of 1662, 80 ff. 

Downame, George, his Abstract of the 
Duties, etc., 40. 

Doyle, J. A., The Puritan Colonies, 
quoted, 297 n., 307 n. 

Drake, Samuel G., quoted, 174 and n., 
301 n. 

Drummond, John, Earl of Melfort, 211 
and n. 

Dryden, John, 79, 86, 128, 293. 

Dublin, M. joins his brother at, 60. And 
see Trinity College. 

Dudley, Joseph, appointed messenger to 
Charles II, 120; appointed President of 
New England, 156; his administration 
considered, 156, 157; and Harvard Col- 
lege, 178,179; Governor of Mass., 338; 
his affiliations, 339; an enemy of the 
Mathers, 339, 377, 378; pamphlet 
against, appears in England, 379; ac- 
cused by the Mathers, 379, 380; men- 
tioned, 118 n., 152, 181, 182, 184, 185, 
205, 251, 337, 358, 382, 383. 

Dummer, William, 389. 

Dunster, Henry, first President of Har- 
vard, 43, 44, 46, 48; resigns, 52. 

Dunton, John, 268. 

Duport, James, 46 and n. 

Dutch, the, war with, 86. 


Eaton, Nathaniel, 43. 

Education, and the Puritans, 23. 
Edwards, Jonathan, 35, 101, 328, 367. 
Edwards, Mrs. Mary, 383. 

Eliot, Captain, 181. 


INDEX 


Eliot, John, Indian Primer, 41; men- 
HOME) 732,197,271. 

Eliot, Joseph, 147. 

Endicott, John, 87. 

England, conditions in, in 1675, 59, 60; 
downfall of Puritans in, 68; course of 
events in, from 1664-1674, 86; policy 
of government of toward the colonies, 
86 ff.; censorship of press in, 106; im- 
perial policy of, and Mass., 117 ff.; and 
the legislation of Mass., 119; and the 
religious test for franchise, 119; the is- 
sue clearly drawn, 121; state of affairs 
in, in 1688, 190 ff.; effect of James II’s 


policy of religious toleration, 190, 191; | 


witchcraft trials in, 304; MM. feels 
called to return to, 347 ff. And see 
Mather, Increase, Revolution of 1688. 

England, Church of. See Church of Eng- 
land. 

Ephemeridum Medico-Physicarum, etc., 
175 and n. 

Erasmus, Desiderius, 4dagia, 76. 

Estienne, Henri, 4pologie pour Hérodote, 
76. 

Evelyn, John, Diary, quoted, 64; 296, 309. 


Fabyan, Robert, Concordance of Histories, 
76. 

Fenner, William, works of, 69. 

Finch, Daniel, Earl of Nottingham, 253, 
254, 287, 378. 

Fitch, James, 140. 

Flamsteed, John, 268. 

Flavel, John, 274 and n. 

Fleetwood, Charles, 195, 196. 

Forbes, James, 65, 66, 69. 

Ford, John, 23. 

Ford, Stephen, 192. 

Foster, John, 112, 250. 

Foxcroft, Justice, 217, 390. 

Franchise, religious test for, denounced in 
England, 119. 

Franklin, Benjamin, 177, 258, 375, 392. 

Frary, Theophilus, 205. 

French, Port Royal taken from, 229, 230. 

Fuller, Thomas, 59, 63, 77. 

Further Quaeries upon the Present State of 
New English Affairs, 234. 


429 


Gaule, John, 309. 

Gedney, Bartholomew, 250. 

George, Captain, 217. 

George I, 375. 

Glanvill, Joseph, 92, 171, 175, 290, 292, 
308, 309. 

Gloucester, England, M. preaches at, 65, 
66. 

God, conception of, in Puritan belief, 22, 
24. 

Goffe, Edward, 44. 

Goffe, William, 88, 89. 

Gookin, Nathaniel, 320, 341. 

Gorton, Samuel, 41. 

Gospel, Society for the Propagation of, 
among the Indians, 271. 

Gospel Order Revived, a reply to M.’s Order 
of the Gospel, heated controversy con- 
cerning, 365 ff. 

Graves, Thomas, 49. 

Great Torrington, M. preaches at, 64. 

Green, Bartholomew, marries M.’s daugh- 
ter Maria, 318. 

Greenhill, William, 95. 

Greenough, William, marries /.’s daugh- 
ter Elizabeth, 318. 

Griffith, George, 196, 275. 

Grotius, Hugo, 77. 

Guernsey, M. chaplain to garrison at, 64, 
65; M.’s second visit to, 66, 67. 


Hale, Sir Matthew, 309. 

Hale, John, 4 Modest Inquiry, etc., 305 
and n. 

Half-Way Covenant, the, advocated by 
M., 84; opposed by First Church of 
Boston, 87; 98, 394. 

Hall, Thomas, 77. 

Halley, Edmund, 145, 264. 

Hampden, John, 191, 215 and n., 217, 
7at. 

Harley, Sir Edward, 216 and n., 217. 

Harrington, James, 40. 

Harvard, John, Harvard College, estab- 
lishment of, made possible by his be- 
quest, 43; his library, 46, 47. 

Harvard College, and the Mathers, 32; 
founding of, 33, 43; ©/.’s_ brothers 
graduated from, 37; M. a student at, 


430 


42, 45 ff.; Dunster first president of, 
43; the first buildings, 44; the Indian 
college, 44, 45; charter of 1842, 45; 
curriculum of, 45, 46; library of, 46, 47; 
rigorous laws and rules of, 47, 48; Chaun- 
cy, second president of, 53; many early 
graduates of, return to England, 58; 
discussion in, 88; its early control of the 
press, 106; M. chosen a Fellow of, 107; 
presidency of, offered to M., and de- 
clined 107, 108; M.’s services to, 108; 
history of, from 1675 to 1685, 108; M. 
acting president of, 177, and rector, 
178; status of, under Andros, 178, 179; 
extracts from treasurer’s records, 178, 
179; Commencement of 1687, 180; M. 
seeks charter for, 197; his request to 
James II concerning 206; William III’s 
promise concerning, 254; question of 
charter for, renewed, 275, 276; Hollis’s 
and other gifts to, 276 ff.; passing of 
M.’s hold on, 317; he secures charter 
for (1692), 339, 340; essential features 
of the charter, 340; members of Cor- 
poration of, thereunder, with M. as 
president, 340, 341; the centre of a bat- 
tle between M. and his enemies, 342; 
M.’s administration of, 342 ff.; the 
“Proposals of 1694,” 343, 344 and n., 
345; project for new buildings, 345; Z.’s 
several offers to resign as president, 346, 
350, 352; William III withholds his 
consent to charter, and why, 348, 349; 
charter of 1697, 349 ff.; M. refuses to 
reside at, 352; 1697 charter rejected by 
William III, and why, 352 and n.; at- 
tempts to preserve sectarianism of, 353, 
354; 1699 charter vetoed by Bellomont, 
353, 354, 355; the long struggle to ob- 
tain a charter ended by Bellomont’s 
death, 355, 356; M. elected president 
and finally takes up residence at Cam- 
bridge (1700), 356; end of his official 
connection with, 356 ff., 371, 372, 3733 
M. succeeded by Willard in control of 
affairs of, 357, 358; the true reason for 
M.’s removal, 358; M. hopes to regain 
his position at, 376, 378; Leverett pres- 
ident of, 379. 


INDEX 


Hathorne, John, member of court to try 
witches, 293 n.; 250. 

Haynes, John, 25. 

“Health-drinking,’ condemned by M., 
163, 164. 

Hell-Fire Club, 139. 

Herbert, George, $9. 

Herrick, Robert, 40, 59. 

Hevel, Johannes, 147. 

Heyman, Samuel, 250, 251 n. 

Higginson, John, 359, 363. 

Hinckley, Thomas, Governor of Ply- 
mouth, 244, 250. 

Hoar, Leonard, President of Harvard, 88; 
resigns, 107. 

Hobart, Nehemiah, 341. 

Hobbes, Thomas, 40, 59. 

Hobby, Sir Charles, 380. 

Holland, Henry, 77 and n. 

Hollis, Thomas, and his gift to Harvard 
College, 276 ff.; C. Mather tries to di- 
vert his bounty to Yale, 382, 383; 387. 

Holt, Katharine, marries R. Mather, 15. 
And see Mather, Katharine (Holt). 

Holt, Sir John, 232. 

Holworthy, Sir Matthew, 279. 

Hook, Robert, 147. 

Hook, William, 95. 

Hooker, Thomas, 17 and n., 29, 3o. 

Hooper, John, Bishop of Gloucester, 65. 

Horrocke, William, 12, 13. 

Howe, John, his career and character, 63; 
M. goes to Great Torrington as his sub- 
stitute, 63,64; mentioned, 69, 144, 191, 
281, 282, 390. 

Hubbard, William, his history of King 
Philip’s War, lio n. 

Hulton, Nathaniel, 278, 279. 

Humble Address of the Publicans of New 
England, 234. 

Hutchinson, Anne, 33. 

Hutchinson, Captain, 112. 

Hutchinson, Elisha, 206, 207, 209, 250, 
262, 264. 

Hutchinson, Francis, 306 n., 308. 

Hutchinson, Thomas, History of the Col- 
ony of Massachusetts Bay, §7, 227, 
ero eG: 

Hyde, Edward, Earl of Clarendon, 86. 


——— 


INDEX 


Indians, M. on relations of Puritans with, 
111; Andros’s troubles with, 203; ef- 
forts to proselytize, 271; M.’s letter to 
Leusden concerning, 271, 272; M. in- 
terested in conversion of, 320; his con- 
stant labors in their behalf, 383; 19, 20, 
37- And see Philip’s War. 

Indians, Society for Propagation of the 
Gospel among. See Gospel. 

Ipswich, M. studies under Norton at, 50, 
se 


Ireland as a field for sowing Puritan seed, 
58, 59. 


Names [Pia 13 Ta: 

James II, Boston ministers send thanks 
to, for his Declaration of Indulgence, 
182; effect of his Declaration and proc- 
lamation of universal religious tolera- 
tion, 190, 191; his promises to M., 201, 
202; M.’s various interviews with, 194, 
195, 197, 204 ff.; his last attempt to re- 
pair his fortunes, 201, 202; driven from 
England, 209; mentioned, 156, 160, 
Booey TOO; DI Ars 210,217. 268, 

Jeffreys, George, Lord, 192. 

Jenkins, Sir Leoline, 183. 

Jephson, William, 214, 215. 

Johnson, Edward, Wonder-Working Prov- 
idence, etc., 42. 

Johnson, Samuel, 375. 

Johnson, William, 252. 

Jolliffe, John, 250, 251 n. 

Jonson, Ben, 23. 


Keith, George, 175 n., 382. 

Kepler, Johann, 144, 147, 175. 

Kick, Abraham, 225 and n., 236. 

King Philip’s War. See Philip’s War. 

Kirke, Percy, first governor of Mass., after 
revocation of charter, never assumed 
duties of the office, and why, 156. 

Kittredge, George L., Notes on Witch- 
craft, 168, 290 n. 

Knox, John, 144. 


Lake, Thomas, go and n., 150. 
Laud, William, Archbishop, 15, 16, 33, 36, 
60. 


431 


Lawson, Deodat, 299 n. 

Lechford, Thomas, Plain Dealing, 41. 

L’Estrange, Sir Roger, 184. 

Leusden, John, letter of M. to, 271, 272: 
mentioned, 225. 

Leverett, Sir John, Governor of Mass., 
149. 

Leverett, John, elected President of Har- 
vard, 379; mentioned, 177, 178, 179, 
276, 278, 341, 344 N., 349, 355, 358, 361, 
367, 369, 378, 389. 

Lilly, William, 146. 

Lloyd, Madam, 200. 

Lobb, Stephen, 191, 192, 195, 197. 

Locke, John, 264. 

Lockhart, Martha, 199, 236. 

London, M. arrives at (1656), 63; Great 
Fire of, 86, 94. 

London, Filt, The, 126. 

London, Bishop of. See Compton. 

Long Parliament, the, 36. 

Lothrop, Barnabas, 250. 

Louis XIV, 136. 

Love, Alderman, 217. 

Lowton (Winwick), R. Mather’s birth- 
place sii 

Lucius, King of Britain, 65. 

Lynd, Joseph, 250, 251 n. 


Magdalen College, Oxford, 202. 

Magherafelt, Ireland, 62. 

Maine, granted to Mass. under new char- 
feDp aa sels 7254. 

Mansfield, Mrs., gg. 

Marriage, in Congregational polity, 119. 

Martin, M., 67. 

Marvell, Andrew, 271. 

Mary, Queen, M. seeks support of, 236 fF., 
2433; mentioned, 225, 263. 

Mary of Modena, Queen to James II, 
209. 

Mason, Stephen, quoted, 200; 201, 260, 
251 n., 264, 267, 280. 

Massachusetts Bay, Colony of, in 1635, 
22, 23; growth in population of, 33; 
common-school system established in, 
37; dominance of Puritanism in, 56, 57; 
persecution of Quakers in, 56, 57; losses 


432 


of in Philip’s War, 108; opposition of, 
to England’s imperial policy, 117 ff.; 
attitude of, concerning Charles II’s let- 
ter, 120; new form of government in, 
157; personnel of Council, 157; new 
provincial government set up in, after 
overthrow of Andros, 218; temporary 
government of, after William’s acces- 
sion, 229; need of settled administra- 
tion in, 229; French and Indian 
troubles, 229; effect in, of Phipps’s fail- 
ure at Quebec, 233; popular feeling in, 
concerning witchcraft trials, as evi- 
denced by election of 1693, 314-316. 
And see New England, Supreme Court, 
Witchcraft delusion. 

Old charter of, 25; guo warranto pro- 
ceedings for its revocation, 120, 152, 
213; English hostility to, 152; meeting 
in Boston votes against revocation of, 
153,154; declared vacated (Oct., 1684), 
146; M. petitions for restoration of, 
215, and seeks reversal of judgment by 
act of Parliament, 217; his pamphlets 
in defence of government under, 220- 
223, 224, 225; his arguments for res- 
toration of, 236. 

New charter for, referred to Com- 
mittee on Trade and Plantations, 232; 
scheme of the agents for, 232 n.; Wil- 
liam III on method of selecting gover- 
nor under, 239, 240, and decree of 
Privy Council as to his powers, 240; 
Treby’s first draft of, and Privy Coun- 
cil’s objections to, 240; his second draft 
and agents’ objections to, 240, 241, 242 
and n., 243; William confirms final 
draft of, with modifications, 244, 245; 
why M. concluded to advise accept- 
ance of, 246-249; acceptance of, op- 
posed by Cooke, 247, 249; new officers 
under, selected by M., 249, 250; his 
“slate” considered, 253; main features 
of, 254, 255; territory covered by, 254; 
M.’s identification with, 256 ff.; to 
whom is credit for it to be ascribed? 260. 
And see Cooke, Mather, Increase. 
Massachusetts General Court, acts of, 
concerning printing presses and licenses, 


INDEX 


106; “reform” measures enacted by, 
after Philip’s War, 114, 115; votes that 
M. as president of Harvard must live at 
Cambridge, 346, 352, 356. 

Massachusetts Historical Society, mez- 
zotint of M. owned by, 151. 

Massinger, Philip, 23. 

Mather, Abigail, 4.’s daughter, 123, 286. 

Mather, Catharine, M.’s daughter, 123. 

Mather, Cotton, M.’s son, prominence of, 
in history of his time, 3; his Magnalia, 
35, 81, 82; on M.’s thesis at gradua- 
tion, 53, 54; on M.’s second sermon, 
56; on the Quaker persecution, 57, 58; 
his Parentator, quoted, 71, 72, 78, 79 
and n., 91, 92; his birth, 73; his pre- 
cocity, 93; at Harvard, 108; graduates, 
122; his “progress in godliness and 
leadership,” 162; ordained as M.’s col- 
league in Second Church, 162; marries 
Abigail Phillips, 162; and the witch- 
craft delusion, 287, 288, 310; his ac- 
count of the trials, 302, 309, 310; at- 
tacked by Calef, 311; his children, 318; 
M.’s Preface to his Fohannes in Eremo, 
324, 325, and his Life of Jonathan 
Mitchell, 327-329; his prominence in 
affairs, 339; and the “Manifesto” of 
Brattle St. Church, 359; and Gospel Or- 
der Revived, 366; fights M.’s battles 
after 1701, 376; and Dudley, 377-380; 
tries to divert Hollis’s bounty to Yale, 
382, 383; and inoculation for smallpox, 
385, 386; and M.’s death, 388; quoted 
on divers subjects, 96, 122, 123, 202, 
276; mentioned, 7, 20, 84, 123, 148 and 
n., 149, 182, 188, 193, 204 n., 226, 272, 
273 and n., 280 and n., 282, 283, 286, 
298 n., 308 n., 313 n., 317, 318, 323 and 
N., 338, 341, 348, 358, 363 n., 364, 
369 N., 370, 372; 384, 387, 389, 390. 

Mather, Eleazar, M.’s brother, death of, 
96; M. publishes his sermons, 98 and 
n.; mentioned, 31, 44, 48, 71, 81, 140. 

Mather, Mrs. Eleazar, 96. 

Mather, Elizabeth, M.’s daughter, 93; 
marries W. Greenough, 318. 

Mather, Hannah, M.’s daughter, 123; 
marries John Oliver, 318. 


INDEX 433 


MatTuer, INCREASE 

Note. — An alphabetical list of Ma- 
ther’s writings, with references to the 
pages of this volume on which they are 
described, will be found in Appendix D. 

Early Years. — Birth, 33, 34; events 
and environment of his childhood, 35- 
38; relations with his mother, 38, 39; 
his education, 39; the literature of his 
early youth, 4o ff.; at Harvard, 42, 44, 
45, 48; influence of Wigglesworth and 
Cotton, 49, 50; tutoring under John 
Norton at Ipswich, 49-53; his conver- 
sion described in his Autobiography, 51, 
§2; influence of J. Mitchell, 53; grad- 
uates at Harvard, 53; his thesis at 
graduation, 53, 54. 

Experimental Years. — His first ser- 
mons in his father’s church, 56; his 
view of the Quaker persecution, 57, 58; 
first visit to England, 59; at Dublin 
with his brother Samuel, 60 ff.; at 
Trinity College, 60, 61; influence of 
Winter and Samuel Mather on, 61; 
takes his M.A. at Trinity, 61, 62; re- 
fuses offer of appointment as Fellow, 
62; goes to England, 63; meets John 
Howe, 63, and preaches at Great Tor- 
rington as his substitute, 63, 64; at 
Guernsey, 64, 65; at Gloucester, with 
Forbes, 65, 66; again at Guernsey, re- 
fuses to sign letters of felicitation on the 
Restoration, and is forced to leave 
Guernsey, 67; preaching in Weymouth 
and Dorchester, 67, 68; sails for home, 
68; books bought in London, 69; the 
experience and impressions of his jour- 
ney, 69, 70; keeps the faith, 70; mar- 
ries his step-sister, Maria Cotton, 72; 
birth of Cotton Mather, 73; his love for 
his children, 73; his first home in Bos- 
ton; 73,74; his library, 75-78; his 
diaries, 78, 79; early a prominent 
figure in Boston, 79; represents Dor- 
chester in Synod of 1662, 80; his atti- 
tude in the controversy regarding ad- 
mission to communion, 80 ff.;_ his Pref- 
ace to Davenport’s Essay for Investiga- 
tion of the Truth, etc., 81, 82; opposed 


to Half-Way Covenant, 83; becomes 
Teacher of Second Church in Boston, 
84; supports Half-Way Covenant, 84, 
87; his change of view considered, 84, 
85. 

Teacher of the Second Church. — Be- 
ginnings of his practice of self-expres- 
sion, 86, 89 ff.; his attitude in the con- 
troversy between Charles II’s repre- 
sentatives and the colonial leaders, 87, 
88; relations with fugitive regicides, 
89; his preaching, 91, 92; his second 
home in Boston, 93; births of his chil- 
dren, 93, 123; his grief for the death of 
his father, 95, 96; effect, physical and 
moral, of that and other griefs, 96 ff.; 
his life of his father, 97; his Preface to 
his brother Eleazar’s sermons, 98; his 
meeting with Mrs, Mansfield, 99; death 
of his brother Samuel, 99; assumes sole 
charge of the Second Church, 99, 100; 
his first volume of sermons, and Owen’s 
preface, 100, 101; Phipps converted by 
his sermon on The Day of Trouble, 102; 
his sermon on drunkenness, 103, 104; 
his religious fanaticism, 104; his domi- 
nant practical strain, 105; by tempera- 
ment a Puritan, 105; appointed one of 
the licensers of the press, 106; chosen a 
Fellow of Harvard, 107; chosen Presi- 
dent of Harvard, but his church refuses 
to give him up, 107; his services to the 
college, 108; and Philip’s War, 109; his 
history of the war, 110-112, 113; and 
the fate of Philip’s son, 113, 114; his 
house destroyed in the Great Fire, 116; 
his attitude in the controversy over 
Charles II’s letter relating to the fran- 
chise and increased toleration, 121, 122; 
a deeply interested spectator, 122; his 
relations with his children, and love for 
them, 122, 123; has premonitions of 
evil, 123, 124; his plan for parcelling 
out his days, 124. 

Literary and political leader. — His 
range of reading as evidenced by his 
books, 125 ff.; the productions of his 
pen from 1675 to 1683, 128 ff.; char- 
acteristics of his sermons, 130, 131; on 


434 


the use of the Bible, 132; his election 
sermon for 1677, 133, 134; on religious 
toleration, and persecution of heretics, 
133, 134, 141-143; his attitude on di- 
vers religious matters, as illustrated by 
his sermons, 1365 ff.; on baptism, 138, 
139; on answers to prayer, 140; pub- 
lishes a book on Holland, 140; his pref- 
aces to other men’s works, 140; his 
discourses on comets, 143, 144, 145- 
147; the Boston Philosophical Society, 
148 and n.; Sewall’s diary quoted on, 
149; disinclined to take second place, 
149; his critics, 149, 150; successful in 
gaining new members for the Second 
Church, 150; his personal appearance, 
150, 151; and the Synod of 1679, 151; 
and the guo warranto against the char- 
ter, 152 ff.; his answer to the king’s 
“Declaration,” 153, 154, and its effect, 
154; his manifold activities in the 
years following, 155, 156, 161; and 
Dudley, 157; books acquired in these 
years, 162, 163, 268, 269; books pub- 
lished by from 1683 to 1688, 163 ff.; de- 
nounces mixed “dancing,” 163; attacks 
“Stage-Plays,” 163, and ‘“Health- 
drinking,” 163, 164; on repentance and 
turning to Christ, 164, 165; on the exe- 
cution of James Morgan, 165, 166; on 
manifestations of the divine Providence 
166, 167. 

Illustrious Providences, its readable- 
ness and importance, 167; its signifi- 
cance as one of the first scientific writ- 
ings in America, 167 ff.; not concerned 
with witchcraft alone, 168; the main 
theme of the book, 168, 169, 170; the 
book considered in the light of Ma- 
ther’s scientific studies, 169, 170, 176; 
compared with similar books, of Clark 
and others, 170, 171; brief summary of 
the book, 171-173; compared with 
Transactions of the Royal Society, 173 
and n., 174; contains Mather’s own re- 
flections on scientific matters, 175; the 
literary style of the book, 177. 

The Flight to England. — Relations 
with his church, 177; becomes acting 


INDEX 


President of Harvard, 177; and ‘“‘Rec- 
tor,” 178; development of the college 
under him, 178; takes precautions 
against attack on the college by royal 
authorities, 178; 179; his service to the 
college, 179; at the Commencement of 
1687, 180; diplomatic necessities of his 
position, 180, 181; and Andros’s re- 
quest for a church in which to hold Eng- 
lish services, 181; his attitude toward 
James II’s declaration of liberty for all 
faiths, 182, 183; Randolph’s enmity 
and the forged letter, 183-185; accuses 
Randolph of the forgery, 185; commis- 
sioned tocarry to England the churches’ 
thanks for the declaration, 185; Ran- 
dolph causes his arrest and trial for 
libel, 185, 186; on his acquittal, pre- 
pares to go to England, 186; Ran- 
dolph’s attempt to cause his arrest a 
second time forces him to leave Boston 
in disguise, 187-189. 

Diplomacy in England, 1688-1692.— 
Lands at Weymouth, 190; the sole pur- 
pose of his journey, 192; steers a mid- 
dle course between factions, 1625910 
London, 192; his interviews with 
James II, 194, 195, 197, 201, 202; 
his charges against Andros, 195; visits 
Fleetwood, 195; other visits and inter- 
views, 196, 197, 198; asks for a charter 
for Harvard, 197; preaches for Cole and 
others, 198; first meeting with Phipps, 
198; and the ladies of honor, 199, 200; 
and Mrs. Blathwayt, 201; end of the 
first stage of his agency, 202; seeks to 
undermine Andros’s standing in Lon- 
don, 203; items of his complaint, 204- 
206; his suggestions, 206; for their re- 
dress, his alleged wish to preserve Con- 
gregationalism in all its vigor, 206 and 
n., 207, 208; his petitions to the Com- 
mittee on Trade, 207, 208, 209; his 
countrymen’s reliance on him, 210; his 
position changed on accession of Wil- 
liam III, 211; his relations with Bishop 
Burnet, Lord Wharton, and others, 211, 
212; attacks Andros in his Narrative of 
the Miseries of New England, 212, 213 





INDEX 


and n., 214; interviews with William 
III, 214, 216, 219, 238, 239; his petition 
for restoration of charter privileges, 
215; seeks reversal of judgment against 
the charter, 217; takes ship to return to 
Boston, 220; his reply to New England 
Vindicated, 221-223, and its effect, 223; 
his other “ Vindications,”’ 223 ff.; was he 
the author of 4 Vindication of New Eng- 
land? 226, 227 and n.; his son’s illness 
compels him to remain in England, 228; 
again in London, 228 ff.; and the Cor- 
poration Bill, 228,229; why he failed to 
sign the formal charges against Andros, 
230, 231; effect of whitewashing of An- 
dros on his position, 231, 232; the peti- 
tion to William III, 232; further war of 
pamphlets, 232, 233 ff.; and Tillotson, 


236; obtains the support of Queen’ 


Mary, 236;/237, 238; 243; andthe 
Countess of Sutherland, 236; and F. 
Charlton, 239; and the negotiations for 
a new charter, 239 ff.; his attitude on 
the religious test for the franchise, 241, 
242,246,248; on the governor’s right of 
veto, 243; his mistaken vehemence in 
opposition to the new charter, 243; his 
objections overruled by the king, 244; 
succeeds in obtaining certain modifi- 
cations, 244, 245; seeks advice as to 
acceptance of charter, 246; arguments 
in favor of accepting, 246, 247; ques- 
tion as to the effect in America of his 
action, 247; in his decision to accept 
lies the real success of his agency, 248; 
his list of officials under the charter ac- 
cepted, 249, 250; his relations with 
Phipps, 250, 251, Stoughton, 251, and 
Addington, 251; his nominations for 
Assistants not made purely on personal 
grounds, 251, 252; why some of the 
former officials were excluded, 252; 
Cooke and Oakes opposed to his course, 
252; his nominations considered, 253; 
his mission in England ends with sign- 
ing of charter, 253; last interviews with 
William III, 253, 254; sails for Boston, 
254; his agency in England considered, 
255 ff.; commits himself to general tol- 


435 


erance in religion, 257; his service to 
three colonies, 257; a pioneer in Ameri- 
can diplomacy, 258, 260; his courage in 
accepting the charter, 259; his per- 
sonality the source of his success, 260, 
261; his skilful pen and his well-stored, 
260; his uncertain temper, 260. 

The Bostonian in London.— How he 
passed his time, 262 ff.; relations with 
Robert Boyle, 265, 266, and Richard 
Baxter, 266; Baxter dedicates his 
Glorious Kingdom of Christ to him, 266, 
267; at Oxford and Cambridge, 267; 
among the bookshops, 267-269; his 
travelling library, 269, 270; Van der 
Spriett’s and other portraits, 270; his 
De Successo Evangelii, 271,272; his in- 
terest in the Indians, 271; divers other 
books and prefaces, 272 ff.; his account 
of his negotiations in England, 274; his 
point of view for the future — a cam- 
paign of education, 274 ff.; eminent di- 
vines testify to his character and ability 
275; C. Mather quoted in his service to 
Harvard during his agency, 276; was it 
he who first interested Hollis in Har- 
vard? 276 ff.; his large expenditures 
and consequent lack of funds, 279, 280; 
his grief for the death of his son Na- 
thaniel, 280, 281; favors the movement 
to unite English Presbyterians and 
Congregationalists, 281; believes in 
need of an oligarchic church govern- 
ment, 282, 283; his opinions and stand- 
ing on his return to America, 283; the 
voyage, 284; his welcome in Boston, 
285. 

The Witchcraft Delusion. — Respon- 
sibility for the persecution of “witches” 
in Salem, generally attributed to Ma- 
ther and his son Cotton, 287; signs 
ministers’ answer to the court’s request 
for advice, 294; disapproves the court’s 
methods, 297, 298; and the conviction 
of Burroughs, 298, 299; the Cases of 
Conscience gives his views on the trials, 
and on the subject of witchcraft, 299 
and n., 300 ff.; his connection with the 
affair, 304, 305, 312, 3133 his [//ustrious 


436 


Providences not responsible for the de- 
lusion, 306 and n., 307, 308; accused of 
responsibility for establishment of the 
witch court, 310; and the charges of R. 
Calef, 311, 312; effect of his stand in the 
matter of the persecution on his power 
and influence, the popular view as evi- 
denced by the election of 1693, 314-316. 

The Last Decade of the r7th Century .— 
Elements of his leadership in the colony 
in 1692, 317; his children and grand- 
children, 318; his standing in his 
church, 319; active in the ‘Cambridge 
Association,” 319; called to the church 
at Cambridge, but declines, 320; his in- 
terest in the conversion of the Indians, 
320; protests against the ordination of 
Bradstreet, 32; more books bought, 
321, 322; new books and prefaces pub- 
lished, 322-324; preface to C. Mather’s 
Fohannes in Eremo, 324, 325; ““amanof 
letters,’ 325, 326; his sermons on an- 
gels, 326, 327; his attitude toward 
apostasy, 327, 328, 330; on baptism, 
328, 329; on innovations in church 
practice, 329, 330; his political position 
as indicated in his writings, 331; de- 
fends the governor’s right of veto, 332, 
333; blamed for Phipps’s veto of 
Cooke’s election, 333, 334; his preface 
to his election sermon (1693), 334; his 
election sermon in 1699, 334-336; his 
fortunes necessarily involved with those 
of Phipps, 338; effect on his position of 
Phipps’s recall to answer charges, 338; 
secures charter for Harvard from the 
colonial government, 339, 340; defects 


of his plan, 340; chosen president of the 
Corporation under the charter, 340; re- , 


ceived degree of D.D., 341; his divided 
allegiance between his church and the 
college, 341; the question of his re- 
moval to Cambridge, 342, 346, 349, 350, 
351, 352, 355, 356; his administration 


of the college considered, 342 ff.; and , 


the “Proposals of 1694,” 343-345; and 
the choice of Brattle as treasurer of the 
college, 345; has little opposition in the 
Corporation, 345; offers to resign the 


INDEX 


presidency, 346, 348, 350, 352; his idea 
that the Lord demanded his return to 
England, 346, 347; his diary not hypo- 
critical, 347; objects to new charter 
(1696) for Harvard, 348, 349; his letter 
to Blathwayt, 350, 351; agrees to live 
at Cambridge, 353; the real issue be- 
tween him and his political foes, 354; 
his hope of being sent to England 
finally killed, 354; again chosen presi- 
dent of Harvard in 1700, and moves to 
Cambridge, 356; decides to return to 
Boston, and resigns the presidency 
finally, 356, 357 and n.; the secret of his 
defeat, 358; the assaults upon his per- 
sonal motives and character, 358; and 
and the founding of the Brattle St. 
Church, 359, 360; his Order of the Gos- 
pel, a reply to the Manifesto of the 


er 


founders of the new church, 360-363; — 


and the war of pamphlets that fol- 
lowed, 364 ff.; the whole subject con- 
sidered, 367 ff.; he fell before odds too 
great for him, 371, 372; his ambition 
not an ignoble one, 372, 373; turns 


“ back to his church and his study, 3733 


devoted to carrying on his life’s object, 
373: 

The Last Years. — His attempt to re- 
gain control of Harvard, 376; his bat- 
tles fought by his son, 376; relations 
with Sewall, 376; previous relations 
with Dudley, 377; opposes him as gov- 


etnor, 377, 378, 379, 380; his political | 


power at an end, 381; continued ac- 
tivity in church affairs, 381 ff.; joins in 
the “Proposals” of 1705, 381; opposes 
George Keith’s doctrine, 382; his in- 
terest in Yale College, 382; accused of 
fomenting dissension at Harvard, 383; 
his will, 383, 384; and his wife’s death, 
384; marries Ann Cotton, 384; his 
Autobiography, 385; his advocacy of in- 
oculation for smallpox and its signifi- 
cance, 386; the churches offer to send 


. him on an embassy to England (1715), 
* but he declines, 386, 387; makes vain 


efforts to resign from his pulpit, 387; 
bad news from Yale, 387; last illness 





INDEX 


and death, 387, 388; his funeral, 389; 
how the news of his death was received, 
389, 390; Colman’s estimate, 391, 392; 
his character and career considered, 
392-396; preéminent in two respects, 
396. And see Harvard College and Ma- 
ther, Cotton. 

Mather, Jerusha, M.’s daughter, 318. 

Mather, John, M.’s great-grandfather, 12. 

Mather, Joseph, M.’s brother, 17. 

Mather, Katharine (Holt), Z.’s mother, 
17, 19, 38, 39, $0, 52. 

Mather, Margarite, M.’s grandmother, 
12. 

Mather, Maria (Cotton), .’s first wife, 
her character, 73; her death, 384, 385; 
mentioned, 93, 123, 237, 280, 285, 286. 

Mather, Maria, M.’s daughter, 93; mar- 
ries Bartholomew Green, 318. 

Mather, Nathaniel, M.’s brother, 17, 31, 
32, 37, 58, 62, 63, 64, 65, 68, 125, 161, 
184, Igl, 1975 277) 320, 390: 

Mather, Nathaniel, M/.’s son, 161, 179, 
280, 281. 

Mather, Richard, M.’s father, his religious 
coming of age, 11; education, 12, teach- 
ing at Toxteth Park, 13, 14; at Oxford, 
14; ordained in Church of England, 14; 
marries Katharine Holt, 15; suspended 
from the ministry and reinstated, 16; 
again suspended for nonconformity, 16; 
his motive in going to New England, 16, 
17, 20, 22; problems confronting him 
there, 20, 22; religion and government 
his chief preoccupations, 23; his Jour- 
nal quoted, 19; his reception in New 
England, 28, 29; his mission a practical 
one, 29; receives divers invitations to 
preach, 29, 30; becomes Teacher of 
new church at Dorchester, 30, 31; his 
writings on church government, 32; 
collaborates in Bay Psalm Book, 32; his 
“way of preaching,” 33; his qualities 
inherited by M., 34; a strong figure in 
the commonwealth, 37, 38; and the 
Cambridge Platform, 38; and John 
Norton, 50; marries John Cotton’s 
widow, 56; his death, 95, 96; teacher 
to the last, 96; M.’s biography of, 96, 


437 


97 and n.; mentioned, 3, 35, 39, 40, 41, 
49, 51, 52, 53, 54, 63, 68, 70, 71, 72, 77, 
80, 81, 83, 87, 367. 

Mather, Samuel, M.’s brother, M. is sent 
to Ireland by advice of, 58, 59, 60; M. 
writes Preface to his sermons, 97 and 
n., 98; his death, 99; mentioned, 3, 17, 
31, 32, 37, 39, 60, 61, 65, 69. 

Mather, Samuel, M.’s son, goes with him 
to England, 188; his illness delays 
M.’s return, 228; mentioned, 93, 192, 
220, 262, 263, 284, 285, 286, 318. 

Mather, Sarah, M.’s daughter, marries 
N. Walter, 318; 93, 280. 

Mather, Thomas, M.’s grandfather, 12. 

Mather, Timothy, .’s brother, 17, 31, 
32, 89, 96, 161. 

Mather, William Gwinn, 223, 234 n. 

Mathers, the, in Lancashire, 11. 

Mathews, A., Harvard Commencement 
Days, quoted, §3n.; 62 n. 

Maverick, Samuel, 87. 

Mayhew, Jonathan, 148. 

Maynard, Sir John, 215 and n. 

Mayo, John, 83, 97, 99. 

Mead, Matthew, 198, 219, 275, 28r, 
282. 

Melfort, Earl of. See Drummond. 

Middlecott, Richard, 250, 251 n. 

Milton, John, 23, 40, 59, 77, 86, 375. 

Mitchell, Jonathan, his influence on M., 
53, 54; and the Synod of 1662, 81, 83; 
death of, 95; mentioned, 327, 328. 

Molyneux, Sir Richard, 13. 

Monis, Judah, 382. 

Monk, George, Duke of Albemarle, and 
M. in Guernsey, 67. 

Monmouth, Earl of, 231, 232. 

Moodey, Joshua, quoted, 210n.; men- 
tioned 1774 219 ne, (280) Moo Na Rok, 
306 Ns\307; 

Moore, G. H., Bibliographical Notes on 
Witchcraft, 297 n. 

Morden, Robert, 267. 

More, Sir Henry, 171, 175, 290, 292. 

Morgan, James, M.’s sermon on execu- 
tion of, 165, 166. 

Morland, Sir Samuel, 147 and n., 169. 

Morton, Charles, 177, 322, 341, 344 n. 


438 


Morton, Nathaniel, 130. 
Morton, Thomas, Bishop of Chester, and 
R. Mather, 14, 15, 16. 


Navigation Acts, 120. 

Neile, Richard, Archbishop, 16. 

New England, in 1635, 19; religious ques- 
tions involved in founding of, 21 ff.; 
literature and art in, 23; conditions in, 
1664-1674, 86 ff.; rigorous censorship 
of printing in, 106; diverse views of 
leaders of, concerning controversy with 
England, 121; town and country in, 
121; M.’s writings on, 128 ff.; sketch 
of events in, from 1683 to 1688, 155 ff.; 
Dudley first president of, after revoca- 
tion of charters, 156; new form of gov- 
ernment in, 157 ff.; status of land titles 
in, 158; right to impose taxes in, 158; 
religious aspect of new régime, 159-161; 
reliance of, on M. after the Revolution, 
210; action of, approved by William 
III, 219, 220; M.’s pamphlet in vindi- 
cation of, 220-223, 224, 225; argu- 
ments for restoration of old charters, 
235. And see Massachusetts Bay. 

New England Weekly Fournal, 278. 

New England’s Faction Discovered, anti- 
colonist pamphlet, 233, 234 and n. 

New England’s First Fruits, 41. 

New Hampshire, under new charter, 244, 
2573 157. 

News from New England (pamphlet), 
question of M.’s authorship of, 233, 
234 and n. 

Newton, Sir Isaac, 145, 264. 

Newtowne (Cambridge), 43. 

Nicholson, Francis, 196. 

Nicolls, Richard, 87. 

Nonconformists in England, in 1688, 
courted by both sides, 190, 191. 

Nonnus, 46 and n. 

Norton, John, M.’s tutor at Ipswich, so- 
52; his character, 50; mentioned, 32, 
41, 79, 82, 324. 

Notestein, W., History of Witchcraft, 
290 n. 

Nova Scotia, granted to Mass. under new 
charter, 244, 254. 


INDEX 


Nowell, Samuel, 49, 120, 178, 192, 206, 
207, 209, 231 n., 262, 264. 
Noyes, Rev. Mr., 359, 363. 


Oakes, Thomas, and the charges against 
Andros, 230, 231; mentioned, 229, 
246 n., 247 N., 249, 252, 259, 260, 290 n., 
292, 348 and n. 

Oakes, Urian, President of Harvard, 101, 
102; quoted, 165; mentioned, 107, 108, 
140, 1$1. 

Oldmixon, John, 92 and n. 

Old South Church, taken over for Church 
of England services, 159. 

Oliver, John, marries M.’s daughter Han- 
nah, 318. 

Orange, Prince of. See William III. 

Ormonde, Earl of. See Butler, James. 

Osborne, Thomas, Marquess of Caermar- 
then, 230, 231. 

Owen, Sir Hugh, 197 and n. 

Owen, John, his Preface to M.’s sermons, 
100; mentioned, 58, 195, 199. 


Paine, Robert, 49. 

Palfrey, John G., History, quoted, 209. 

Palin, M. 12, 13. 

Palmer, John, defends Andros, 234. 

Paracelsus, Philippus A., 144. 

Parrington, V. L., 147 n. 

Parris, Samuel, 321. 

Pasteur, Louis, 264. 

Payn (Payne), Nevil, 196, 260. 

Pemberton, Ebenezer, 358, 360, 361, 369 
378, 381. 

Penn, William, 196, 197, 200, 201 and n., 
260. 

Pepys, Samuel, 147. 

Perkins, William, 294 and n., 3o1, 309. 

Petre, Father, 192, 197. 

Philip’s son, responsibility for treatment 
of, 113, 114. 

Philip’s War, 109 ff.; M.’s history of, 110 
and n., 111, 112, 113; importance of, in 
New England history, 112, 113. 

Phillips, Abigail, marries Cotton Mather, 
162. 

Phillips, John, 250. 

Phillips, Samuel, 181, 187, 188 and n. 


INDEX 


Philosophical Society in Boston, founded 
by M., 147,148. 

Phipps, Lady, 237. 

Phipps, Sir William, early career of, 198, 
199; settles in Boston, 199; opposes 
Andros, 199; converted by M., 199; 
takes Port Royal from French, 229, 
230; his expedition to Quebec and its 
failure, 232, 233; in England, seeking 
aid for new expedition, 233; selected by 
M. as governor under new charter, 249; 
his qualifications for the office, 250, 251; 
a military man needed, 250; returns to 
Boston with M., 283, 284, 285; and M. 
and the witchcraft trials, 310; his char- 
acter, 337, 338; recalled to England to 
answer charges, 337; his death, 338; 
results of M.’s relations with, 338; men- 
tioned, 102, 203, 226, 238, 253, 263, 264, 
287, 290 n., 292, 296, 304, 305, 317, 320, 
331, 3325 333s 334s 339s 349 342, 398. 

Pike, John, 305 and n., 306 n. 

Pike, Robert, 250. 

Plautus, 69, 270. 

Plymouth, migration to, 21; invites R. 
Mather to be its minister, 30; MM. seeks 
restoration of charter of, 215; under 
new charter, 244; 254, 257. 

Pollard, Sir Hugh, 67. 

Pollexfen, Sir Henry, 232. 

Poole, W. F., 168. 

Pope, Alexander, 375. 

Port Royal, taken by Phipps, 229, 230. 

Portland, Earl of. See Bentinck. 

Powell (Henry Powle?), 198 and n., 231. 

Powis, Sir Thomas, 198 and n. 

Presbyterians. See Congregationalists and 
Presbyterians. 

Prideaux, Matthias, 78. 

Prince, Thomas, 163, 272. 

Privy Council, order of, concerning 
powers of governor under new charter, 
240; objects to Treby’s first draft of 
charter, 240. 

Proctor, John, 298. 

Prynne, William, Histriomastix, 77; 33. 

Puritanism, difficulty of defining, 8; often 
intolerant and cruel, 10; M. and, 10; 
dominance of, in Mass., 56 ff.; outlook 


439 


for, in Ireland, 58, 59; downfall of, in 
England, 68. 

Puritans, religious belief of, 8, 9; distinc- 
tion between two types of, among early 
settlers in New England, 21, 22; edu- 
cation of, 23; their artistic and literary 
standards, 74, 75; in Boston, and Royal 
Commissioners, 87; division of opinion 
among, 87, 88; MM. on their course to- 
ward the Indians, 111; and the new ré- 
gime in religion, 159, 160; in England, 
in 1688, divided opinion among, IgI. 


Quakers, persecution of, in Mass., 56, 57 
and n.; M.’s view of, 57, 58; 114, 115, 
IIg. 

Quarles, Francis, 47. 

Quebec, failure of Phipps’s expedition 
against, 232, 233. 

Quick, John, 198, 275, 323. 

Quincy, Josiah, History, 255 n., 277, 278, 
340n., 346n., 349, 357m. 358n., 


359 Ne, 396. 
Quo Warranto. See Massachusetts Bay, 


old charter of. 


Raleigh, Sir Walter, 77. 

Ramus, Peter, 54, 76. 

Randolph, Bernard, 185. 

Randolph, Edward, as special messenger 
of the crown, in Boston, 117 and n., 
118 n., 119, 120; brings Quo Warranto 
to Boston, 152; on Kirke, 156; and 
Dudley, 156; his active enmity to M., 
183 ff.; the forged letter, 184; accused 
by M. of the forgery, 185; causes M.’s 
arrest, to prevent his sailing for Eng- 
land, 185 ff.; ordered back to England, 
428; mentioned, I1§n., 141, I5gn., 
203, 204, 217, 229, 230, 233, 234 and n., 
P4320? (2607322) 361. 

Ranger, Edmund, 112. 

Ratcliffe, Rev. Mr., chaplain to Andros, 
180. 

Religion in the founding of New England, 
Otetts 

Religious toleration, in New England, un- 
der Andros, 158, 159; under new ré- 
gime, welcomed by M., 182, 183. 


440 


Repentance, M. on, 164. 

Revolution of 1688, the, 209. 

Rhode Island, M. seeks restoration of 
charter of, 215; 1657, 

Richards, John, appointed messenger to 
Charles II, 120; his relations with M., 
122; extracts from his records as treas- 
urer of Harvard, 178, 179; member of 
court to try witches, 293n.; elected 
judge of Supreme Court, 303; men- 
tioned, 150, 152, 217, ZO) SES aT, 
345. 

Rogers, John, 107, 177. 

Rosewell, Thomas, 191. 

Rosse, George, 183. 

Roxbury, invites R. Mather to be its 
minister, 30. 

Royal Society, Transactions of, and I/us- 
trious Providences, 173 and n., 1745075. 

Russell, James, 250. 

Russell, John, 307. 

Russell, Richard, 125. 

Russell, William, Earl of Bedford, 215 


and n. 


Sacheverell, William, 217 and n., 228. 

Salem Village, witchcraft delusion and, 
288 fF. 

Saltonstall, Nathaniel, member of court 
to try witches, 293 n.; opposes court’s 
methods, 296, 297; mentioned, 250, 
310, 315. 

Scaliger, Julius Cesar, 144. 

Science, M.’s interest in, 143 ff.; his atti- 
tude toward, as exhibited in I//ustrious 
Providences, 167, 168 and Ns 170, 2 700K. 

Scot, Reginald, 289, 290. 

Second Church. See Boston, Second 
Church. 

Sergeant, Peter, member of court to try 
witches, 293 n.; 250. 

Sergeant, Thomas, 196. 

Sewall, Samuel, supports M. in England, 
216; member of court to try witches, 
293; elected judge of Supreme Court, 
303; and C. Mather, 376; his Diary 
quoted, 116, 149, 233, 285n.; men- 
tioned, 177, 181 and n., 193,0203,)908, 
227, 250, 260, 263, 267, 279, 296, 309, 


INDEX 


311 and n., 315, 316, 339, 349, 3595 
366, 377, 379, 381, 383, 384, 388, 389, 
397: 

Seymour, St. J. D., The Puritans in Ire- 
land, quoted, 61. 

Shadwell, Thomas, 263. 

Shaftesbury, Earl of. See Cooper, An- 
thony A. 

Sharp, Captain, 67. 

Shepard, Samuel, 43. 

Shepard, Thomas, 49, 107. 

Shrimpton, Samuel, 183. 

Shute, Prd. 

Sibley, J. L., Biographical Sketches, iit 

Sidney, Henry, Secretary of State, 240. 

Sinclair, George, Satan’s Invisible World 
Discovered, 171. 

Smith, John, 252. 

Somers, Sir John, and the charges against 
Andros, 230, 231, 232; mentioned, 217 
and n., 257. 

“Spectral evidence” in witchcraft trials, 
293, 294, 295, 296, 300, 309: 

Speedgood, negro servant, 384. 

Spencer, Robert, Earl of Sunderland, 196 
and n., 197, 207, 237. 

Stephen, Henrie, 4 World of Wonders, 
171. 

Stoddard, Solomon, 360, 363, 383. 

Stoughton, William, selected by M. for 
lieutenant-governor under new charter, 
249; his character and opinions, ants 
presides at witchcraft trials, 292; 
elected judge of Supreme Court, 303; 
succeeds Phipps as governor, 338; let- 
ter of M. to, 356; mentioned, 107, 118 
and n., 120, 149, 178, 181, 285, 296, 309, 
340, 3155 317, 337. 339; 348; 3525 3595 
366. 

Strafford, Earl of. See Wentworth. 

Sturt, John, engraver, 270. 

Sunderland, Earl of. See Spencer, Robert. 

Supreme Court of Massachusetts, estab- 
lished by General Court, 303; persons 
accused of witchcraft acquitted by, 
304. 

Sutherland, Countess of. See Wemyss, 
Lady Jean. 

Swift, Jonathan, 283, 375. 





- 
— - a 


INDEX 


Synod of 1662, decision of, concerning 
admission to communion, 80 ff., not 
universally approved in Boston, 87, 88; 
98. 

Synod (“‘Reforming’’) of 1679, results of, 
Is1 and n., 152. 


Tanner, Arthur, 188 n. 

Taxation for support of church, 28 and 
n.; power to impose under new charter, 
255 

“Taxation without representation,” 158. 

Taylor, Henry O., The Medieval Mind, 
quoted, 6. 

Taylor, Jeremy, 40, 59. 

Temple, Sir Thomas, go. 

Terence, 270. 

Thacher, Peter, 353, 388, 389. 

Thacher, Thomas, 106. 

Thompson, Sir John, 212, 217. 

Thompson, Robert, 192, 211, 227, 262. 

Thoresby, Ralph, 144. 

Thorn, George, 68. 

Thorner, Robert, his bequest to Harvard, 
oA hg le Bee 

Thurston, ——, 187. 

Tillotson, John, 236, 239. 

Tilton, Peter, 252. 

Toleration and persecution, M.’s views 
on, 141-143. 

Torrey, Samuel, Exhortation and Reforma- 
tion, 103 and n.; 108, 140, 353. 

Toxteth Park, R. Mather, teacher and 
preacher at, 13 ff. 

Treat, Samuel, 272, 320. 

Treby, Sir George, Attorney-General, his 
drafts of new charter, 240, 241; sends 
M.’s protest against final form of char- 
ter to Privy Council and William III, 
243; mentioned, 232, 257. 

Trent, William P., 168 and n. 

Trinity College, Dublin, Puritanical lean- 
ings of, 58, 59; M. takes his master’s 
degree at, 58-60; history of, 60; con- 
ditions in, in 1657, 60, 61. 

Triple Alliance, the, 86. 

Turner, William, Compleat History, etc., 
171, 272. 

Tyler, Moses C., 168 and n. 


441 


United Colonies of New England, 36, 37. 

Upham, Charles W., Salem Witchcraft, 
etc., quoted, 295 n.; 290 n., 298. 

Usher, John, 218, 229 and n. 

Ussher, James, Archbishop of Armagh, 59. 


Van Loon, H. W., 272 n. 

Van der Spriett, John, his portrait of M., 
270. 

Vane, Sir Henry, 73. 

Vaughan, Henry, 40, 59. 

Vergil, Polydore, 144. 

Vindication of New England, A (pam- 
phlet), authorship of, 225-227 and n. 

Voltaire, Arouet de, 77. 


Wadsworth, Benjamin, 353, 389. 

Walker, W., Ten New England Leaders, 
en. 

Waller, Edmund, 40. 

Walley, John, 250. 

Walter, Nehemiah, marries M.’s daugh- 
ter Sarah, 318; 280, 341, 344 n. 

Walton, Izaak; 40. 

Ward, , Bishop of Salisbury, 63. 

Ward, Nathaniel, The Simple Cobler of 
Aggawam, 41, 42. 

Way, Wr mageT kh pos 

Weaver, Colonel, 67. 

Webster, John, 289, 290, 300. 

Welde, Thomas, 32. 

Wemyss, Lady Jean, Countess of Suther- 
land, supports M.’s efforts, 237; men- 
tioned, 199, 200, 260. 

Wendell, Barrett, Cotton Mather, 3 and 
n., §n.; quoted on M., 398. 

Wentworth, Thomas, Earl of Strafford, 
36. 

Wesley, John, the elder, 68. 

Weyborn, Sir John, 224. 

Weymouth, England, ©. preaches at, 67, 
68; M. lands at, in 1688, 190. 

Whalley, Edward, 88, 89. 

Wharton, Goodwin, 267. 

Wharton, Philip, Lord, 202, 211, 212, 214, 
DAOW2T 8.290 207% 

Wharton, Richard, 280. 

Wheeler, Sir Francis, 320, 398. 

White, John, 64. 





442 


White, Robert, engraver, 270. 

Whiting, John, 175 n., 307. 

Whitney, Samuel, 130. 

Wigglesworth, Michael, M. quoted on, 48; 
his Day of Doom, 79, 148; mentioned, 
54, 149, 383. 

Willard, Major, 112. 

Willard, Samuel, 14.’s prefaces to divers 
works of, 141, 273, 330; and the witch- 
craft trials, 296, 297; personal relations 
with M., 330; succeeds M. in control of 
affairs at Harvard, 357, 358 and n.; his 
death, 378; mentioned, 149, 181, 299, 
300, 392, 303, 305, 307, 309, 311, 319, 
322, 341, 344 N., 348, 349, 353, 355, 359» 


373, 389, 395. 
William III (Prince of Orange), invades 


England by invitation and becomes 
king, 209; M.’s position how changed 
by his accession, 211; M.’s first inter- 
view with, 214; confirms in office all 
colonial governors except Andros, 215; 
M.’s second interview with, 216; 
promises to order removal of Andros, 
216; his perplexing problems, 217; 
M.’s third interview with, 219; ap- 
proves the overthrow of Andros, 219, 
220; by proroguing Parliament, checks 
progress of Corporation Bill, 228, 229; 
and the acquittal of Andros, 232; refers 
plan for new charter to Committee on 
Trade, 232; further interviews of M. 
with, 238, 239; his non-committal re- 
plies, 239; expects new charter to pro- 
vide for governor appointed by king, 
239, 240; declines to interfere with or- 
der of Privy Council as to powers of 
governor, 240, or to head agents’ pro- 
tests against charter, 244; M.’s final in- 
terview with, 253, 254; and the new 
charter, 259, 260; withholds assent to 
1692 charter of Harvard, 348, 349, and 


INDEX 


to 1697 charter, 352 and n.; men- 
tioned, 201, 202, 234, 235, 249, 250. 

Williams, Roger, 26, 41. 

Wilson, John, 73, 87, 324. 

Winslow, Edward, 41. 

Winsor, Justin, Literature of Witchcraft, 
quoted, 306 n., 308 n.; 290 n. 

Winter, Josiah, 61, 69. 

Winter, Samuel, Provost of Trinity, 58, 
60, 61, 62, 63; Summe of diverse Ser- 
mons, etc., 69. 

Winthrop, Adam, 250. 

Winthrop, John, History of New Eng- 
land, quoted, 30, 36; mentioned, 25, 
28, 37. 

Winthrop, John, 2d, 143. 

Winthrop, Wait, member of court to try 
witches, 293 n.; 250, 316. 

Winwick, Lancashire, 11. 

Wise, John, 158, 205, 282, 290n., 305, 
309; 367 370, 381, 392, 395 and n. 

Wiswall, Ichabod, 244, 260. 

Witchcraft, M.’s views on, as stated in 
Illustrious Providences, 168; common 
belief in, 289 ff. 

“Witchcraft delusion,” the, in New Eng- 
land, tendency of historians to hold the 
Mathers responsible for, 287, 288; his- 
tory of, 288 ff.; members of court, 292, 
293 and n.; the court dissolved, 303; 
change of feeling concerning, and end 
of, 300; M.’s connection with, re- 
viewed, 304 ff. And see “Spectral evi- 
dence.” 

Wither, George, 47. 

Wood, Anthony, 279, 281. 

Wood, William, 29. 

Wycherley, William, 263. 


Yale College, M.’s interest in, 382; C. 
Mather tries to divert Hollis’s bounty 
to, 382, 383. 


This Index was made for the author by George B. Ives of the 
Harvard University Press. 





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